Embedded Instrumentation Resources

The embedded instrumentation resources below will give a good overview of this recent technology for the validation and test of high-speed circuits and components. However, if you'd rather speak to someone to find out more about our embedded instrumentation solutions, click here.

The Future is Now with ScanWorks® !

Advancing technology is challenging many of the industry's established validation, test and debug methodologies. Multi-core/multi-die chips, serial buses with speeds in excess of five gigabits-per-second (Gbps) or complex new packages like system-in-package (SiP) or package-on-package (PoP) are difficult if not impossible to validate and test with traditional test equipment.

ScanWorks® has the tools you need now to optimize the effectiveness of the  instrumentation that is being embedded into chips, onto circuit boards and within systems. And, as an open tools platform, ScanWorks will grow as your needs grow, and as more and more instrumentation is embedded.

Click on one of the links below to learn about specific applications of the ScanWorks platform for embedded instrumentation.

• Design Validation
• Test
• Debug

Reduce Your Costs Today!

The ScanWorks embedded instrumentation platform delivers valuable life-cycle cost savings. For example, the same routines developed to validate a design could be re-used later in the system's life-cycle by manufacturing engineers to diagnose assembly flaws or even later by field service personnel to troubleshoot intermittent failures. Until now, new test vectors and validation routines would likely be developed during each phase in a system's life cycle, resulting in exorbitant cumulative costs. With ScanWorks' open tools for embedded instrumentation, validation, test and debug algorithms become portable, moving from chip to circuit board and system; and from one phase in the lifecycle to the next.

Design Validation

ScanWorks' tools for design validation take advantage of several embedded instrumentation technologies, including Intel®'s Interconnect Built In Self Test (IBIST), processor emulation and boundary scan. ScanWorks' tools for bit error rate testing (BER), pattern generation and margining make the most of the IBIST technology that Intel is embedding in its next-generation chips, including the Nehalem microarchitecture and the high-speed Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) architecture. With ScanWorks' processor emulation tools, routines running at processor speeds can exercise much of the system for functional validation. And ScanWorks' boundary scan tools speed up the validation process by quickly eliminating manufacturing defects or to program FPGAs and flash memory for what-if analysis.

Test

In test applications, ScanWorks can bring to bear industry-leading boundary scan tools, as well as Intel® IBIST and processor emulation functionality. The test coverage provided by ScanWorks' boundary scan testing capabilities and supplemented by its processor emulation technology is second to none. In addition, tools that generate test patterns from embedded IBIST technology can perform testing on high-speed SerDes buses, which are notoriously difficult to test since most designers do not allow test points on SerDes buses because of performance concerns. This testing capability increases test coverage in a very difficult area to test to even higher levels.

Debug

The ScanWorks boundary scan and processor emulation tools can diagnose a wide range of defects, flaws and failures to the pin level in most cases. And, with ScanWorks' IBIST tools, BER and margining routines can provide diagnostic information down to the lane level to aid in debug and repair.

Click here to speak to an ASSET representative about the ScanWorks platform for embedded instrumentation.