Boundary-scan bursts into the modern production facility

The IEEE 1149.1 boundary-scan standard was adopted ten years ago to solve anticipated problems in printed circuit board testing as board densities and complexities continued to escalate. We can see today that the foresight of the original JTAG committee was excellent. For the first several years after adoption of the standard, relatively few users had implemented boundary-scan solutions in their production lines. Now, however, for a number of reasons, interest in boundary-scan has rapidly intensified: IC manufacturers have accepted boundary-scan as a feature that must be included in new ICs; advances in board and IC packaging technologies have accelerated, making new test strategies imperative; standard tools for engineering and production are now available to support boundary scan, dramatically reducing test development effort, capital investments, along with a corresponding reduction in time to market. As a result, virtually every manufacturer of modern electronic boards has either adopted boundary-scan or faces difficult problems in manufacturing that could be resolved through boundary-scan. This paper examines recent developments in boundary-scan technology as it relates to the development and production environments. Advanced tools, packaged to meet the needs of these environments, have brought boundary-scan into its prime. A detailed description of lifecycle implementation of boundary-scan is provided covering R&D, the factory, and service.