Test Data Out

First to support all of Intel® Silicon View Technology

This week Intel® advanced embedded instrumentation a few steps – actually, a few leaps forward – with its announcement of Intel® Silicon View Technology (Intel SVT). And ScanWorks became the only tools platform to support all three pillars of Intel SVT: platform debug, electrical validation and board manufacturing testing. There are a few ICT testers that support one or two of the pillars, but not all three, as ScanWorks does.

Why is this a big deal?

Boundary-Scan Testing of PCI Express

As we’ve covered in some previous blogs, the differential, AC-coupled nature of PCI Express allows this bus to be somewhat self-healing, whereby some structural defects will allow the bus to transparently run, albeit at a degraded performance. Due to this, these short-circuit and open-circuit defects may be completely masked from conventional functional test. But such defects are important to detect, because they will affect the throughput of the port. Boundary scan can be used to detect these defects, subject to the implementation of IEEE 1149.1 and IEEE 1149.6 in the chips.

Defects on High-Speed Memory – Part 2

Last month, we saw how defects on memory data lines can cause a system to fail, and yet escape detection by the system boot loader or BIOS. Let’s examine this in more technical detail.

SIV versus SMV – Part 2

Last week we saw a $300,000 oscilloscope. This week, we look at another one for $470,000. The sky’s the limit when it comes budgeting for ‘scopes. But aside from the price, what other advantages are there of embedded instrumentation-based system marginality validation tools?

Defect Coverage | Non-intrusive Board Test eBook

Think about it. Test without touching a single bus with probles. Test without expensive fixtures. Soft access through existing board connectors and JTAG ports to create virtual, re-programmable test points. Wherever you want them. Whenever you want them. Clearly, 'mechanical test' is the way of the past and a software-driven approach is the future. But it's here and now. 

This is non-intrusive board test, or NBT, becuase it really does not contaminate your tests results in any physical way. And that is important as speed continues to increase and physical access goes away. Instead, non-intrusive test relies solely on a combination of embedded instrumentation, onboard test structures and tools that access the test object through software or 'soft access'.

Learn all about non-intrusive board test directly from Adam Ley, Chief Technologist at ASSET InterTech, provider of the soft access ScanWorks platform for board debug, validation and test, by registering for our eBook, "Defect Coverage | Non-intrusive Board Test eBook".

Signal Integrity Validation (SIV) versus System Marginality Validation (SMV)

Back a few years ago, engineers used expensive high-end oscilloscopes to perform signal integrity validation (SIV) on their designs, and considered that adequate in determining the success of a design. But with today’s products, process and parameter variations occur that require system marginality validation (SMV) to be done by less expensive software-based tools, to determine if a design is ready for high volume production.

Defects on High-Speed Memory

In previous blogs we covered the kind of defects that might exist on high-speed serial I/O and their associated impacts on system performance and stability. A similar analysis on DDR SDRAM yields some interesting findings.

Structural Defects on High-Speed Serial I/O - Part 3

In the first two parts of this multi-part blog, we reviewed different kinds of short circuit, open circuit, and stuck-at faults and how they might affect link performance. Let’s recap and rank these defects and see what we can do about them.

Structural Defects on High-Speed Serial I/O - Part 2

In my previous blog, we reviewed the effects of a missing capacitor and a short to ground on the performance of high-speed serial buses. What other kinds of defects should be considered, and what can we do about them?

Adaptive Equalization and Power Consumption

Poorly tuned adaptive equalization will cause systems to gulp power, instead of sipping it. What’s the technology behind this?