CheckSum Provides Low-Cost In-Circuit with Boundary-Scan Test; Low-Cost Test Platform Delivers In-Circuit with Boundary-Scan Test for Under $70,000.

ARLINGTON, Wash. -- CheckSum, a leading supplier of low-cost in-circuit test (ICT) systems, announced that its combination of in-circuit test and boundary scan delivers test coverage equivalent to traditional "big iron" testers costing five times as much.

John VanNewkirk, President and CEO, stated, "CheckSum's ICT plus boundary scan solution costs less than $70,000 and provides superior alignment between tester resources deployed and the actual fault spectrum of today's complex boards than traditional big-iron testers do."

CheckSum estimates that more than $250 million is wasted annually in North America alone due to the misalignment of big-iron testers with the actual faults found in today's boards. Two basic trends are converging, creating the opportunity for electronics manufacturers to use new, lower-cost approaches that provide a better alignment between test coverage and actual faults than the traditional ICT test methods used over the past two decades.

"First, component technology and the SMT assembly process itself have shifted the fault spectrum of a typical board such that big-iron ICT test capabilities are no longer aligned to it," said VanNewkirk. "For example, ICT vector testing was designed for the straightforward static logic of the devices of the 80's and early 90's. Modern ICs are not testable with conventional ICT 'backdrive' vectors because of access, speed and device complexity issues. As a result, expensive digital vector capability remains idle in virtually every big-iron ICT.

"Second, increasing density of circuit boards is significantly reducing electrical access to boards -- the lifeblood of in-circuit test. To offset loss of access, there's growing and widespread use of boundary scan-equipped devices. For CheckSum, boundary scan is a natural extension of our low-cost design philosophy because it achieves equivalent or better coverage compared to traditional backdrive vectors, but is far more usable for complex chips.

"Low-cost ICT and boundary scan are naturally complementary, and we believe this is the future of manufacturing test," VanNewkirk asserted.

Real-world Example of Low-cost ICT with Boundary Scan

As an example of CheckSum's cost advantage, VanNewkirk cited a recently completed evaluation at a major contract manufacturer. "CheckSum provided a low-cost boundary-scan test solution for under $70,000, including the cost of the CheckSum ICT tester and boundary-scan tools from a third-party supplier, which were selected by the customer and used to generate the boundary-scan test programs," said VanNewkirk.

"One-time charges were approximately $55,000 for a CheckSum Analyst tester and $15,000 for the third-party hardware and software," said VanNewkirk. "Recurring costs of test for similar boundary scan-equipped boards would be only about $12,000 for a test fixture and program. This real-world example underscores the substantial price advantage for ICT-based boundary-scan test, compared to performing boundary-scan testing on traditional in-circuit testers from Agilent, GenRad, and Teradyne."

VanNewkirk provided the following detail about the board used for the evaluation. The 5" X 11" board had 1,200 electrical nets, of which only 68% could be physically probed and tested using conventional ICT techniques. By adding boundary-scan test, the test coverage increased from 68% to 88% -- an increase of 30%. In addition, the board included 40 ICs, the largest being an 860-pin ASIC. While many of the ICs were not testable with conventional ICT "backdrive" vectors, most of the ICs on this board were testable with boundary scan.

CheckSum supports boundary-scan test-generation tools from all the leading suppliers, including Acculogic, ASSET, Corelis, Goepel, and JTAG, as well as USB-based boundary-scan programming tools.

About CheckSum

CheckSum is a leading supplier of low-cost in-circuit test solutions -- including systems, fixtures, and program -- to the electronics manufacturing industry. CheckSum has been delivering reliable, cost-effective, and easy-to-use test solutions to OEMs and contract manufacturers for 18 years. With an installed base of over 2,500 test systems at more than 200 companies in over 40 countries, CheckSum helps customers ranging from automotive electronics manufacturers to global EMS providers reduce their total test and manufacturing costs and increase their manufacturing margins.

CheckSum is the only North American Automated Test Equipment (ATE) supplier to offer turnkey test program and fixturing packages solutions and an engineering-oriented approach to customer support, giving customers a cost-saving alternative to traditional ATE suppliers. Satisfied customers helped CheckSum become the winner of the 2004 Evaluation Engineering "Readers' Choice" award in the category of ATE. For more information, visit www.checksum.com.