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ASSET becomes a founding member of iNEMI’s boundary scan initiative
 When the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative’s (iNEMI) recently recruited companies to support a boundary scan adoption project, the group turned to ASSET. By becoming a founding member of the project, ASSET has asserted a leadership position in the effort. Because the IEEE 1149.1 boundary scan infrastructure must be embedded in chips in order to bring benefits later on during circuit board and system test, iNEMI felt that greater adoption of boundary scan and adherence to the standard would reap significant benefits throughout the electronics industry in general.
“Boundary scan is an excellent example of how the efforts of a cross-industry group can benefit all of the electronics industry,” said Jim McElroy, iNEMI’s chief executive officer. “If we can generate greater support for boundary scan among electronic design automation (EDA) tools suppliers and chip makers, many of the downstream electronics companies such as circuit board makers and systems providers stand to benefit greatly because their products will improve in quality. Moreover, their test procedures will be more comprehensive and less costly.”
As a first step toward encouraging greater adoption of boundary scan, the iNEMI boundary scan project group is undertaking a survey of the electronics industry to determine the technology’s current adoption rate and to identify any possible impediments to more widespread use of boundary scan. If obstacles are identified, the group will develop and implement solutions for removing them. Alan Sguigna, vice president of marketing and sales, represents ASSET on iNEMI’s boundary scan project group.
“Since its development in the 1990s, adoption of boundary scan has benefited the industry greatly. We want to expand upon this base and take it up to another level,” said Sguigna. “We feel that the boundary scan ecosystem is not yet complete and we want to do what we can to ensure this technology can be applied effectively in design validation, test and debug applications for chips, circuit boards and systems. This will pave the way for other standards that support methodologies for more complex embedded instruments, such as the Internal JTAG (IJTAG IEEE P1687) standard that is currently being developed.”
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