Cambridge, England, September 3, 2024 — XJTAG®, a leader in JTAG boundary scan products, will be presenting a talk entitled “Introduction to Accelerated PCBA Testing and Programming” at FPGAworld™ in Stockholm on September 10th, 2024 at 11:30 and also in Copenhagen on September 12th at 14:50. The company will also be manning a stand at both conferences, in partnership with its local distributor, Nohau Solutions.
XJTAG will be demonstrating the latest version of the software suite, XJTAG 4.0, which contains a number of improvements to the software. The headline new feature is Optimised Scans which allow different JTAG chains on a board to be run simultaneously at different clock frequencies, allowing your tests to run at their full potential, rather than being restricted by a few slower devices.
Simon Payne, XJTAG CEO said, “All FPGAs have boundary scan built in, but many engineers don’t realise how it can help them. FPGAworld is a great opportunity to demonstrate how the board’s JTAG connection allows engineers to use the FPGA’s boundary scan capabilities to test their board.”
FPGAworld is an international conference for engineers working with FPGAs, and acts as a forum for discussion and networking. The formal presentations during the day and informal discussions at the venue’s booths and over lunch or coffee give engineers the opportunity to learn from industry experts like XJTAG.
Tommaso De Vivo, XJTAG’s Vice President Business Development, EMEA, will be presenting at FPGAworld as well as being available at an exhibition booth for 1-to-1 discussions. He said, “I’ll be explaining what boundary scan is and how it allows an FPGA’s pins to be turned into virtual test points that can be read and controlled. I’ll show how that can be used to test the board for assembly faults and to perform accelerated programming.”
One of the biggest problems with testing modern high-density PCBAs comes from the lack of physical access to points in the circuit caused by shrinking board area and the use of advanced IC packages such as BGAs. Tommaso De Vivo said, “The beauty of using boundary scan to test the board is that the reduced level of physical access no longer matters. And because you don’t need to configure the FPGA or run any code on the board, you can also use it to find out what’s wrong on boards that won’t boot.”
XJTAG’s tools provide an easy-to-use way to make the most of an FPGA’s boundary scan capabilities. Boundary scan is used by many engineers in R&D, test, and manufacturing across all industry sectors. It assists them with board bring-up as well as test and debug, and having an FPGA on the board also allows for accelerated programming of memories.
Registration for the conference is free for attendees and includes free lunch and drinks; go to fpgaworld.com for details. To learn more about XJTAG and how boundary scan helps engineers, visit xjtag.com.
About XJTAG (www.xjtag.com)
XJTAG is a world leading supplier of JTAG boundary-scan hardware and software tools. Its products use IEEE Std.1149.x (JTAG boundary scan) to enable engineers to debug, test, and program electronic circuits quickly and easily. This can significantly shorten the electronic design, development, and manufacturing processes. XJTAG focuses on innovative product development and high-quality technical support. For more information about the company, its products, and its services, please visit www.xjtag.com.
About JTAG
JTAG is an IEEE standard that was developed to address the difficulties of testing circuits that use packaging technologies such as Ball Grid Arrays and Chip Scale Packages, where solder connections aren’t accessible to traditional bed-of-nails testers. Although JTAG has since become popular for processor debug and for programming FPGAs and CPLDs, they only make use of the standard’s communications protocol. The full benefit of the JTAG standard comes from its introduction of boundary scan techniques for testing and debugging assembled boards; XJTAG’s tools give you an easy way to use those capabilities. Read more about JTAG here.
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