Technical Overviews
Keysight’s flashing station for programming of industrial and automotive devices:
The purpose of flashing solutions is to program chips on the board-based target device (e.g. startup EEPROM storages) either by direct pin access of the chips’ boundary pins or by utilizing the processor on the target board. Depending on the target device, the boundary scan architecture (JTAG) might alternatively be used for programming tasks. The success of programming gets verified through calculation of the checksum.
There are many possible locations to program the target device in the production line – which leads to the question: which one may be the most efficient? The answer to the question cannot be given in a simple postulate. It is dependent on the current application and includes considerations that have effects on the design of the production line and its logistics.
Table 1 shows the pros and cons of where to program. This may help the user to make decisions and/or to define a flashing strategy.
A flashing strategy does not have to be a static decision for one or another specific test step but may be very flexible and dynamic to be optimized according to production and specific product requirements.
Having a separate flash station can allow for both in-circuit test and functional test resources to be balanced. There can even be a dynamic balance when using the same flash programming components and methodology both on the ICT and the flashing station.
Keysight Flashing Station
The Keysight Technologies, Inc.Flashing Station-based solution comprises a system within a standard rack to be connected to a generic fixture platform.
The system’s PC controller comes with the Test Exec SL Sequencer software which controls the flashing process and provides a programmer and operator interface. The basic instrumentations are the UUT power supplies, auxiliary power supplies for the flash devices and switching resources e.g. for automation purposes within the fixture. The system may contain further instrumentation in cases where functional tests are planned to be combined with the flashing process.
The fixture architecture has two elements: the Fixture-Base (containing platform support and flash instrumentation) and the UUT Adapters (both solutions are possible here: bed of needles or functional test adaptation).
This design encapsulates the position of the flash devices precisely at the place where they should be: in the base fixture. This allows the most flexible distribution of the expensive flash equipment on the production line and an assembly close to the UUT in order to guarantee short signal paths. Additionally this approach provides basic functionality for the integration of one or several flashing technologies.
The exchangeable UUT adapters allow easy administration of different UUTs. This framework architecture essentially ensures that the UUT elements and fixture base units can remain as distinct components in the entire system. This allows the cost of UUT adapters to be kept at a minimum and yet enable the UUTs to benefit from the functionality of the fixture base and test system
The Keysight TestExec SL Software Reduces Development Time
The TestExec SL software comes pre-installed on the industrial PC (IPC) and is ready to be uses for software development. It provides a complete test development and test execution environment which also allows you to organize and order tests, reconfigure the test parameters, profile the execution speed and debug tests. The software also provides an efficient and effective structure for developing the test plans and sequencing for flashing tasks.
Several key features in the TestExec SL help the user to reduce software development time:
The Flashing Station’s topology and wiring are completely mapped to the TestExec SL software, enabling the user working on a UUT-centric abstraction layer with ease of test development.
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