Category: Industry Standards and Forums

Those of you with a telecom background are no doubt aware of the โ€œOSI Network Modelโ€, also known as the OSI pyramid or stack. It is a way of sub-dividing a communications system into smaller parts called layers. A layer is a collection of similar functions that provide services to the layer above it and receives services from the layer below it. A decade ago, the telecommunications test industry underwent a revolution when platforms emerged that could cover multiple layers of the OSI stack. Now, the same thing is happening in the circuit board test industry...
It is a well-known fact that manufacturing test strategies must involve a combination of inspection, structural, and functional test technologies in order to yield highest quality and minimize customer returns. But a new breed of non-intrusive, software-based technologies promises to disrupt legacy test solutions by guaranteeing the highest test coverage at the lowest cost. These technologies leverage off of the embedded instruments within silicon to achieve this goal in the following ways...
ASSET has been awarded the prestigious 2010 Innovation of the Year Award in the PCB automated test equipment category by Frost & Sullivan. This distinguished award is a tremendous third-party validation of ASSETโ€™s embedded instrumentation strategy, and is based upon our drive to reduce test costs in the face of increasingly complex test challenges...
Last week, ASSET unveiled the first toolkit for IEEE 1687 at the International Test Conference (ITC) in Austin, TX. ITC is the cornerstone of โ€œTest Weekโ€, a premiere technical event which addresses the challenges of providing high-quality, cost-effective test solutions for chips, boards and systems...
Because ASSET is a pioneer in the use of non-intrusive solutions for validation, test and debug (using what we call โ€œembedded instrumentationโ€), we often get asked if legacy testers like In-Circuit Test (ICT) machines can be used for the testing of high-speed I/O...
The IEEE 1687 standard resonates with engineers and managers, no matter which part of the semiconductor-based product lifecycle they are involved with, because it either solves a technical problem, it provides a cost advantage, it reduces the amount of work, or it enables automation of some (onerous) taskโ€ฆ
This is the first of a series of blogs answering the question, โ€œwhat is IEEE 1687โ€. Subsequent blogs will cover the topics โ€œwho uses IEEE 1687โ€, โ€œwhat are the advantages of using IEEE 1687 (why use IEEE 1687)โ€, and โ€œhow to use IEEE 1687.โ€
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