CAMBRIDGE, England, December 2, 2003 – XJTAG Limited (www.xjtag.com), a specialist design and test tool developer and part of the Cambridge Technology Group, has signed an agreement with Europractice to supply its highly acclaimed XJTAG Development System – which can test JTAG and non-JTAG devices – at a heavily discounted rate for use by academic and not-for-profit research institutions.
“It’s vital that we get our tools in front of tomorrow’s embedded developers and test engineers as early as possible,” said Simon Payne, CEO at XJTAG. “The XJTAG system is very powerful and simple to use and is proven to cut design costs and shorten development cycles substantially. We believe these factors – and the reusability of scripts – make it an attractive proposition for Europractice customers.”
Europractice is a European Union initiative to improve the competitiveness of European industry by stimulating the wider use of state-of-the-art technologies across research and educational establishments. The Europractice Software Service has nearly 600 member institutions across 35 countries.
“At Europractice we aim to provide best-in-class, market-leading tools and techniques to our members at an affordable price,” said Dr John McLean, head of Europractice’s Microelectronics Support Centre in the UK. “We approached XJTAG about supplying its system to Europractice as there is growing demand for development and test tools, particularly those that can test JTAG and non-JTAG devices.”
XJTAG can test a high proportion of the circuit including BGA and chip scale devices, SDRAMs, Ethernet controllers, video interfaces, flash memories, FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays), microprocessors and many other devices. XJTAG also enables In-System Programming of FPGAs, CPLDs (Complex Programmable Logic Devices) and flash memories.
The powerful and easy-to-use XJTAG Development System provides a fully-integrated environment which can migrate seamlessly through the product life cycle from early design to field support and repair. XJTAG enables circuit designers to shorten the development cycle and prototyping process by facilitating early test development, early design validation of CAD netlists, fast generation of highly functional tests and test re-use across circuits that utilise the same devices.
XJTAG test scripts are also re-usable and portable across different boards due to the novel device-centric approach that the designers have adopted. Re-usable device tests and the abstraction of device tests from both circuit detail and complexity of JTAG (Joint Test Action Group), mean that designers can quickly develop systems to debug elements of their designs and to functionally test early prototypes. The test systems developed can then be taken forward seamlessly to production testing and through into field support and repair.
For more information about the XJTAG Development System, please contact XJTAG Limited, St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0DS, U.K. Telephone +44 (0) 1223 223007, fax +44 (0) 1223 223009 or contact us.
About XJTAG (www.xjtag.com)
XJTAG Limited is a specialist design and test tool developer. Its JTAG (Joint Test Action Group) development system offers a competitive solution for designers and developers of electronic circuits. Utilising XJTAG allows circuit development and prototyping process to be shortened significantly by facilitating early test development, early design validation, fast development of functional tests and test re-use across circuits that utilise the same devices. The company is based in the U.K. at the St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge, U.K.
About the Cambridge Technology Group (www.cambridgetechgroup.com)
Cambridge Technology Group is a holding company with three wholly owned subsidiaries – Adiabatic Logic Limited, Cambridge Technology Consultants Limited and XJTAG Limited. Adiabatic Logic (www.adiabaticlogic.com) was set up to exploit a portfolio of secured patents in the low power technology arena. Adiabatic Logic’s patented Intelligent Output Driver (IOD), launched in May 2003, delivers significant (up to 75%) power savings in chip I/O for portable devices such as laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), MP3 players and smartphones.
Cambridge Technology Consultants (www.camtechconsultants.com) offers its clients – companies such as ARM, AT&T, BOC Edwards, Celoxica, Co-operative Group, Fujitsu, Marconi, Mitsubishi Electric and IPWireless – a broad range of services from high-end applications to innovative product development and technical consultancy skills. For ten years, its multi disciplinary team of hardware and software engineers have provided cost-effective solutions from concept through to pre-production.
About Europractice (www.europractice.com)
The Europractice Software Service provides easy access to modern Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools for European non-commercial teaching and research institutions. It is managed by the Microelectronics Support Centre, CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK. The service provides leading-edge tools from many of the major suppliers and has nearly 600 active member institutions across 35 countries in Europe.
What is JTAG?
Advances in silicon design, such as increasing device density and, more recently, ball grid array (BGA) and chip scale packaging, have reduced the efficacy of traditional electronic circuit testing methods. In order to overcome these problems and others, some of the world’s leading silicon manufacturers combined to form the Joint Test Action Group (JTAG). The findings of this group were used as the basis for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) standard 1149.1: Standard Test Access Port and Boundary Scan Architecture and subsequently the standard became known as JTAG.
