ScanWorks automates FCT process

Asset InterTech has expanded its ScanWorks platform for embedded-instrument engineers with tools to select instruments, set parameters, and insert them into FPGAs to function as PCB testers. The FCT system operates the board tester in a chip from a drag-and-drop user interface to perform validation, testing and debugging. According to the company, escalating gate densities make FPGAs an effective platform for embedded test-and-measurement applications. Higher speeds and greater complexities have increased the electrical sensitivities of chips and boards to the point at which physical probes provide inadequate test coverage and unreliable results.

PCB-design projects can encounter delays because engineers cannot validate the hardware on the board until after completion of the firmware or operating-system-software development. FCT, in contrast, does not depend on any product software. Instead, designers can insert a board tester, bring up and wring out first prototypes of a design, and then remove the tester. If they need it later in the product’s life cycle, they can insert it again, or a part of it can remain in the FPGA.

ScanWorks automates practically all of the FCT process. It selects instruments or instrument functions from a library and matches them with a description of one of the supported FPGA devices in another ScanWorks library. After a user sets the configuration parameters on the selected instruments, ScanWorks automatically generates all of the constructs for the embedded tester, facilitates the synthesis of the instrument code into the firmware the FPGA requires, and creates the software image of the tester to program the FPGA. ScanWorks then inserts the tester in the FPGA and provides a drag-and-drop user interface to operate and manage the tester. FCT’s abilities expand the coverage of ScanWorks’ other nonintrusive technologies, including boundary-scan test, processor-controlled test, and high-speed-I/O validation. ScanWorks FCT will become available in December 2011 from Asset InterTech and its distributors. A development license sells for $35,000.

Asset InterTech