ASSET Helps Mercury Implement JTAG Test With Boundary Scan

"ASSET speeds up the isolation of interconnect faults, and that saves a lot time."

CUSTOMER

Joe Kadaras, Test Engineer for Mercury Computer Systems. Mercury designs and manufactures high-performance digital signal processing systems that transform sensor data into information in real time.

CRITICAL ISSUE

Confronted with a scan chain of 40,000 latches, Mr. Kadaras certainly didn’t want to write the test vector by hand.

REASONS

Mercury has a high level of confidence in the third parties who provide assembled boards to them. However, when one fails, they need to quickly diagnose and debug it. Because the initial project had a military application, reliability and availability were very important factors in the system’s performance.

VISION

Mr. Kadaras needed tools and a business partner to help develop and implement a DFT strategy involving JTAG test and boundary scan tools.

WE PROVIDED

Mercury used ASSET tools to automatically develop the boundary-scan vectors and then embedded the ASSET Scan Engine product so that all of the interconnects in the system would be checked every time the system was powered up.

RESULT

By implementing DFT with ASSET tools and support, Mercury was able to decrease the time and costs required to conduct tests at many stages of each product's life cycle. "ASSET speeds the isolation of interconnect faults, and that saves a lot time for our test technicians," explained Kadaras.

Based on this success, Mr. Kadaras plans to build on the DFT foundation he has put in place. His immediate next steps include implementing in-system programming (ISP) with the ASSET ScanProgrammer product. "ASSET makes it easy for us to roll-out enhancements and train our technicians. This makes us more productive with the tools."

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