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PCT Detects Link Training Failures

Alan Sguigna

August 8, 2011
10:47 am

One of our customers was experiencing field returns when 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports started failing to pass traffic at full line rate. How could they test for these failing boards in manufacturing and prevent them from getting out to customers?

Board Bring-Up

Alan Sguigna

July 17, 2011
4:28 pm

Board bring up of an early prototype is one of the most important steps for a design team. The first boards must pass through a battery of tests to demonstrate that the hardware is rock-solid. Non-intrusive technologies can be used to accelerate this process.

What is JTAG? and What is IJTAG?

Alan Sguigna

July 4, 2011
11:50 am

I’m sometimes asked how JTAG, IJTAG and boundary scan all relate to one another. Here’s a short explanation.

Drift in High-Speed I/O Circuits

Alan Sguigna

June 12, 2011
5:45 pm

With chip-to-chip interconnects now running at 8 GT/s and above, a new class of faults due to manufacturing and process drift is emerging. What are these faults and how are they detected?

IEEE P1687 and In-Circuit Test (ICT)

Alan Sguigna

June 5, 2011
9:43 am

Run IEEE P1687-based tests at ICT? I don't think so...

The Experts weigh in on Serial-Data Link Testing

Alan Sguigna

May 14, 2011
4:49 pm

Today I read an interesting article in Electronic Design magazine about the complexity of testing third-generation serial-data technology. With comments from Agilent, Tektronix and LeCroy, the article highlights all of the problems associated with oscilloscopes, BERTs, AWGs and other “heavy-metal” products, and not surprisingly doesn’t say anything about the elegant alternative of using embedded instrumentation…

Is your laptop highly available?

Alan Sguigna

April 17, 2011
2:06 pm

Is your laptop highly available? Maybe not yet, but... The author ruminates on why he's spending his precious weekend hours troubleshooting gadgets that should work all the time.

The Limitations of ICT

Alan Sguigna

April 9, 2011
2:58 pm

Tired of that old bed-of-nails? Legacy In-Circuit Test (ICT) has been diminishing in value for a long time. Let’s explore some of the current technical issues with ICT as test access on new circuit board designs continues to disappear.

Debugging on Steroids

Alan Sguigna

April 3, 2011
9:18 am

ScanWorks Embedded Diagnostics is embedded firmware which uses a CPU’s debug port to access a system’s architecturally visible registers, memory and I/O. See the technology and benefits behind this "debugger on steroids".

PCT Detects Link Training Failures

Board Bring-Up

What is JTAG? and What is IJTAG?

Drift in High-Speed I/O Circuits

IEEE P1687 and In-Circuit Test (ICT)

The Experts weigh in on Serial-Data Link Testing

More Problems with In-Circuit Test

Is your laptop highly available?

The Limitations of ICT

Debugging on Steroids

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