ASSET In The News:

Arden Bjerkeli’s column on maximizing test coverage.

Dave Bonnett’s column on automating JTAG design-for-test.

UK’s Electronics Manufacture & Test magazine article on test coverage by ASSET’s European Sales Manager, Reginald Waller.

Don’t miss the article “Full Test Coverage -- Feasible or Fools Gold?” by ASSET’s Arden Bjerkeli in the upcoming September issue of Evaluation Engineering Magazine!


 

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OBSERVATIONS

“Maximizing Test Coverage” strikes a chord
By Alan Sguigna

The recent webcast that ASSET produced with Test and Measurement World magazine told us several things. First, there’s a lot of interest in maximizing test coverage, the topic of the webcast. Over 500 engineers attended the live webcast and others are viewing it from the archive page on Test & Measurement World: TMWorld.comT&MW’s website. Arden Bjerkeli, ASSET’s Director of Support, Training and Services, did an excellent job explaining how a well thought out test strategy is the best way to achieve as much test coverage as you possibly can.

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To view the webcast from T&MW’s website, click here.

 

TEST DATA OUT

Dotting your “i’s” not enough. Validate your 1149.1!
by Scott Creekpaum and Alan Sguigna

Chip designers may breathe a sigh of relief when they find out that their BSDL (Boundary Scan Description Language) files are syntactically and semantically correct; but, then again, that doesn’t mean that the BSDL matches the capabilities of the chip or, even worse, that the chip itself has correctly implemented the IEEE 1149.1 boundary-scan standard. Several relatively simple steps can be followed to avoid the far reaching – and very costly – problems that bad BSDL files and poor 1149.1 implementations at the chip level invariably cause.

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TAPPING IN

TelStrat turns to ScanWorks for complex device testing

TelStratLife was much simpler a couple of years ago when TelStrat, a manufacturer of telecommunications systems, deployed ScanWorks to do diagnostics and troubleshooting in its manufacturing operation. Then, the company’s circuit boards had a few complex chips that were tricky to test. Now though, ball grid arrays and other complex chip packages are commonplace and TelStrat is thankful it has ScanWorks to test them.

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INSIDE ASSET

Embedded instruments link boundary scan to innovative design validation technologies

Steven TerryFaster chip-to-chip buses, more complex chips, systems-in-packages, systems-on-a-chip – it’s enough to make a test engineer’s head spin. Design Validation collageBut as test technologies have evolved, so too has boundary scan and ScanWorks. Steven Terry, ASSET’s Development Manager for Design Validation, explains how the industry is coming up with new ideas and moving to new methods to keep pace. One of the most notable and exciting trends is embedded instrumentation.

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Test Coverage webcast draws interesting responses from participants

Arden BjerkeliDuring the recent webcast that ASSET sponsored with Test & Measurement World, several polling questions were posed of participants. Arden Bjerkeli, ASSET’s Director of Support, Training and Services, and presenter during the webcast, takes this opportunity to review the responses to the polling questions and explain some of the surprises.

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Just in case you missed it and would like to view the webcast, “How to Maximize Test Coverage,” click here to access the archived webcast.

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IJTAG working group passes first milestone

With the posting of a preliminary hardware document on its web site, the IEEE P1687 working group, also known as Internal JTAG (IJTAG), has passed its first major milestone with the release of a proposal for a hardware architecture. The hardware description is a straw-man proposal which has been accepted by the working group and is now being placed in the public domain to encourage open discussion. The preliminary proposal outlines how IEEE 1149.1 boundary scan (JTAG) interfaces to IJTAG, the types of embedded instruments broadly defined by an IJTAG standard, the connectivity options for the embedded instruments and the general board-level architecture that the proposed standard could support.

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And the winner of the Bose headphones is…

The big winner from our annual User Satisfaction Survey is ASSET. That’s because of the value we place on your input and the effects your comments have on our strategic directions. After ASSET, the next biggest winner from the survey was the lucky user whose name was selected to receive the Bose® QuietComfort® 3 headphones. Even though we could name only one prize winner, we always take every response very seriously. Click below to read about this year’s winner and the actions we plan to take as a result of this year’s survey.

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