In case you missed it, the most recent issue of the IEEE’s Design & Test magazine devoted approximately half its space to the introduction of IEEE P1687 Internal JTAG (IJTAG). The title on the cover reads: “Hidden Treasure? IEEE P1687: The IJTAG Standard.”
The magazine is an excellent introduction to the technical and economic aspects of the IJTAG standard for embedded instruments. Hopefully, when you’ve read the articles, you’ll agree that IJTAG is a treasure. Of course, those of us who have been developing the standard would hope that it doesn’t remain hidden for long. It’s sorely needed for validating, debugging and testing SoCs, complex circuit boards and systems. And some companies, such as Cisco Systems, are looking at IJTAG as a troubleshooting tool for chips and systems in the field.
I collaborated with several other engineers, including ASSET’s John Potter, Ajay Khoche of Khoche Consulting and Jennifer Dworak of SMU, on an article that discusses how an embedded tester could be based in an FPGA and employ P1687 IJTAG as a command, control and observe system. But there’s a lot more IJTAG info in this issue of Design & Test. Mentor Graphics contributed an article about financial issues concerning IJTAG, comparing the cost of older, traditional ways of handling embedded instruments with the reduced costs of IJTAG methods. Other IJTAG articles describe the efficiency of the IJTAG infrastructure and came from Alcatel-Lucent Labs in France and New Jersey, and researchers in Tallinn, Estonia.
If you’re a member of IEEE or want to purchase these excellent IJTAG articles, you can download them here: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6221038
For a high-level overview of P1687 IJTAG for those who are just getting started with it, check out our IJTAG Tutorial. It will get you up to speed. "How to use embedded instruments and IJTAG/JTAG".
