Blog

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 โ€œheavy-metalโ€ products, and not surprisingly doesnโ€™t say anything about the elegant alternative of using embedded instrumentationโ€ฆ
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.
Tired of that old bed-of-nails? Legacy In-Circuit Test (ICT) has been diminishing in value for a long time. Letโ€™s explore some of the current technical issues with ICT as test access on new circuit board designs continues to disappear.
ScanWorks Embedded Diagnostics is embedded firmware which uses a CPUโ€™s debug port to access a systemโ€™s architecturally visible registers, memory and I/O. See the technology and benefits behind this "debugger on steroids".
ScanWorks Embedded Diagnostics for x86 systems requires a connection between the embedded service processor (BMC, FPGA or other) supporting run control and the target CPU(s). The nature of these connections is described herein.
As testing with legacy equipment becomes more problematic, engineers look for better ways to improve test coverage, enhance diagnostics, and speed up test times. But an overriding consideration is the cost of test โ€“ are the new test technologies more or less expensive than older solutions like ICT?
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...
Archives