- XJTAG selected ahead of competition due to its price, reusability of scripts and ‘unbeatable’ speed of test development
- Multiple licence agreement provides engineers at Cambridge Broadband with access to XJTAG at sites in the UK, China and Malaysia with more to follow
- Contract manufacturing partner (Benchmark Electronics) also uses XJTAG for testing production boards.
CAMBRIDGE, England, April 15, 2004 Cambridge Broadband (www.cambridgebroadband.com), the fixed wireless access solutions provider, has selected XJTAG Limited (www.xjtag.com), a specialist design and test tool developer and part of the Cambridge Technology Group, as its global test solution partner.
Cambridge Broadband has signed a multiple licence agreement to make the XJTAG Development System available in key global locations including the UK, China and Malaysia. The System will also be used by Cambridge Broadband’s contract manufacturing partner, Benchmark Electronics, for testing production boards.
“We assessed the solutions from several leading boundary scan test suppliers and opted for the XJTAG Development System because of its price, reusability of scripts and its ‘unbeatable’ speed of test development,” said Alistair Massarella, co-founder and head of product integration at Cambridge Broadband. “Using XJTAG we can now test and debug our boards in days as opposed to weeks and we don’t need dedicated people. This product has transformed our test regime; our designers are now JTAG aware and we are getting our boards into the field far more quickly than before.”
The sales success of Cambridge Broadband’s VectaStar 3500 system – which is being increasingly adopted by network operators as an alternative broadband access solution providing data rates up to 60Mbps with guaranteed quality of service means that there are already thousands of units and printed circuit boards deployed globally. With 20 different boards in its portfolio and lots of new development in the pipeline, its engineers needed a solution that could be used at various stages in the product lifecycle: by its engineers for debug and testing early prototypes; by its contract manufacturing partners for production testing; and for testing, upgrading and repairing boards in the field.
“Speed of deployment of our VectaStar system is our key competitive advantage so it was important that we adopted a test solution that was fast, versatile, easy to use and portable. It also had to be able to test BGA devices,” added Alistair Massarella. “What’s great about XJTAG is its ability to test JTAG and non-JTAG devices our boards are a mixture of both – and perhaps, most importantly, is the fact that XJTAG test scripts are reusable and portable across different boards, which saves our engineers so much time.”
The powerful and easy-to-use XJTAG Development System, launched in 2003, is designed to cut the cost and shorten the development cycle of electronic products and provides a unique solution that can test JTAG as well as non-JTAG devices. XJTAG can test a high proportion of a 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 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.
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 Cambridge Broadband (www.cambridgebroadband.com)
Cambridge Broadband has pioneered the development of carrier-class, point-to-multipoint broadband wireless access equipment for network operators wishing to deploy high-capacity, multi-service networks. The company is focused on delivering high quality multi-service networks with the best price-performance in the 3.5GHz band for license holders worldwide. Cambridge Broadband was founded in January 2000 by an experienced team with a strong record of successful innovation in broadband wireless equipment. For more details please visit www.cambridgebroadband.com.
About VectaStar
Cambridge Broadband’s VectaStar 3500 system offers the most advanced combination of high bandwidth, high coverage and extended range on the market. It supports multiple carrier-class services simultaneously, each with robust QoS and has a 480Mbps (Megabits per second) base station capacity that can deliver up to 60Mbps full-duplex per customer. The VectaStar has excellent non-line-of-sight capability and self-backhaul at ranges up to 20Km, making it a compelling solution for network operators looking to deploy high-capacity multi-service networks.
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.
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.
