XJTAG boundary scan saves Haliplex over US$100k per year

XJTAG system enables Haliplex to cut costs, waste and time to market across its range of communications products
XJTAG combines powerful capabilities with an extremely competitive price, and represents outstanding value

Cambridge, England, May 11, 2009 — Haliplex, a leading manufacturer of next-generation edge access and multiplexing solutions, estimates that it is saving hundreds of thousands of dollars by using XJTAG’s IEEE Std. 1149.x boundary scan system to debug prototypes and to test production units.

Anthony Merry, co-founder and chief technical officer of Haliplex, said: “The XJTAG system is saving us over US$100,000 per year by reducing the engineering time to commission new boards, by enabling us to repair boards more quickly, and by reducing the number of boards that are scrapped. XJTAG combines powerful capabilities with an extremely competitive price, and represents outstanding value among boundary scan test systems.”

Haliplex designs flexible and modular Multi-Service Provisioning Platform (MSPP) products that are the smallest of their kind and can be deployed in flexible ways within existing or new networks supporting high-bandwidth standards such as Gigabit Ethernet and SDH/SONET.

Products such as the Haliplex HPX1600 series of multi-service access terminals contain printed circuit boards that are densely populated with devices such as high-performance embedded processors, FPGAs and ASICs, as well as high-speed telecom data-path devices. Other components include optical fibre drivers, I2C, One-wire devices, and Ethernet switches.

“XJTAG allows us to achieve high test coverage for each board, and helps trace faults accurately to save debugging and repair time. This has reduced the typical time to commission a new design for production by around four days,” added Anthony Merry. “Given the number of new boards we develop in a year, for example, this saves us around US$24,000 of engineers’ time. This alone means that XJTAG pays for itself extremely quickly. But we are gaining further savings by also basing our production test strategy on XJTAG.”

Haliplex’s contract manufacturing partner builds the boards and uses the XJRunner run-time-only version of XJTAG optimised for production-test applications, to test each production unit. Device programming and loading of serial numbers is also completed from within the boundary scan environment.

“XJRunner has diagnostic features that help our contract manufacturer track down faults that would otherwise consign a proportion of boards to our ‘repair pile’. This has reduced the number of failed boards passed to us by around 90%, saving over US$64,000 of waste per year as well as around US$12,000 of our repair technicians’ time,” continued Merry.

The XJTAG development system is a cost-effective solution for debugging, testing and programming electronic printed circuit boards and systems throughout the product lifecycle. It is used worldwide by design engineers, developers, OEMs and contract manufacturers for producing highly integrated BGA-populated printed circuit boards and systems.

XJTAG reduces the time and cost of board development by allowing early development of reconfigurable test scripts that can be used from design validation through prototype debugging and on into manufacturing. XJTAG has a global network of distributors servicing Europe, the Far East, North and South America, the Middle East and Australasia.

For more information about the XJTAG development system, please contact XJTAG, St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0DS, UK. Telephone +44 (0) 1223 223007, fax +44 (0) 1223 223009 or email enquiries@xjtag.com. Alternatively, visit old.xjtag.com.

About Haliplex (www.haliplex.com)

Haliplex is a leading manufacturer of next-generation edge access and multiplexing solutions for the utilities market. Haliplex designs flexible and modular Multi-Service Provisioning Platform (MSPP) products that are the smallest of their kind. Haliplex products allow network designers to deploy traditional or next-generation services including Ethernet over bonded PDH circuits and Ethernet over SDH/SONET. Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, Haliplex has offices in the USA and a worldwide network of distributors, system integrators and resellers.

About XJTAG (old.xjtag.com)

XJTAG is a leading global supplier of IEEE Std. 1149.x compliant boundary scan development systems. XJTAG offers a highly competitive solution for designers and developers of electronic printed circuit boards and systems. Utilising XJTAG allows the circuit design, development and manufacturing process to be shortened significantly by facilitating early development of reconfigurable and re-useable test scripts that can be used from design validation through prototype debugging and on into manufacturing.

The XJTAG development system enables engineers to debug and test a high proportion of the circuit (both JTAG and non-JTAG/cluster devices) including BGA and chip scale packages, such as SDRAMs, Ethernet controllers, video interfaces, Flash memories, FPGAs and microprocessors. XJTAG also enables In-System Programming of FPGAs, CPLDs and Flash memories, and XJTAG clients have access to a library of device-centric test scripts.