Imagination Technologies adopts XJTAG to speed development of system-on-chip designs

Cambridge, England, March 2, 2010 — Imagination Technologies (www.imgtec.com), the leading multimedia and communications chip technologies company, is using the XJTAG boundary scan development system to accelerate the development of its systems-on-chip designs for customers across the mobile phone, handheld, mobile computing and in-car electronics markets.

Engineers at Imagination Technologies’ IMGworks group in Kings Langley, Herts, UK, needed a faster and more efficient approach to debugging and testing complex  hardware designs. Typically, these designs feature high I/O interconnect density with complex FPGAs and many signals running on internal layers that could not be probed.

Mark Dunn, VP Engineering of Imagination Technologies’ IMGworks group said: “We recognised the need to move from socket-based testing to a boundary scan based system and found that only XJTAG offered the functions and ease-of-use that we were looking for. XJTAG’s engineers demonstrated their system using our own assemblies, which gave us complete confidence that we could quickly produce the tests we needed.”

Imagination Technologies is now using XJTAG to test and debug prototypes, test assemblies and customer development boards. They observed that XJTAG has significantly reduced their test-development effort, and allows compilation of effective test scripts even before the hardware is ready. Using XJTAG, test execution time is usually around 10 minutes, and the tests filter out the majority of assembly flaws, whereas the socket-based tests used to take over one hour to execute.

“XJTAG has much greater functionality than we expected and we can test memory interfaces and non-JTAG components well beyond the scan chain – making the system very flexible for debugging in the laboratory,” added Mark Dunn. “XJTAG is a powerful engineering tool, which is perfect for our requirements.”

Imagination Technologies’ IMGworks group develops complete highly customized SoC solutions for its customers as well as test chips for internal use incorporating Imagination’s IP cores, and works with Tier 1, startup and specialist semiconductor companies targeting mobile and consumer multimedia products markets.

Simon Payne, XJTAG’s CEO, said: “We are delighted that Imagination Technologies, a global company that’s working at the forefront of multimedia and communication silicon technologies, has adopted our system to accelerate the development of their customers’ system-on-chip designs.”

The XJTAG boundary scan 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.

XJTAG contact details: XJTAG, The Irwin Centre, Scotland Road, Dry Drayton, Cambridge CB23 8AR, UK. Telephone +44 (0) 1954 213888, fax +44 (0) 1954 211565 or email enquiries@xjtag.com . Alternatively, visit www.xjtag.com.

About XJTAG (www.xjtag.com)

XJTAG is a leading global supplier of boundary scan development systems compliant with IEEE 1149 standards. XJTAG allows hardware development and manufacturing processes to be shortened significantly, through early development of re-useable tests. XJTAG development systems enable rapid hardware debug and test of both JTAG and non-JTAG (cluster) devices, such as SDRAMs, Ethernet controllers, video interfaces, Flash memories, FPGAs and microprocessors. XJTAG also enables In-System Programming of FPGAs, CPLDs and Flash memories.

XJTAG’s headquarters are in Cambridge, UK, with a network of distributors across Europe, the Far East, North and South America, the Middle East and Australasia. See: www.xjtag.com