News Briefs

Agilent Technologies has unveiled a limited-access technology for in-circuit test (ICT) that eliminates the need for physical test points, offering benefits that Agilent’s traditional VTEP technology cannot provide. Part of Agilent’s VTEP v2.0 Powered test suite, the Cover-Extend technology is a hybrid of boundary scan and VTEP vectorless test. It leverages VTEP hardware, such as the VTEP probe and mux card (pictured).

Unlike VTEP test, which requires physical test points on the printed-circuit-board assembly (PCBA) for the injection of test stimulus signals, Cover-Extend relies on stimulus provided by boundary-scan cells, which do not require physical test points. The benefits include improved test coverage, which preserves users’ investment in in-circuit testers. (Cover-Extend can recover up to 50% node access.) Other benefits include savings on fixturing, a continuous operating cost that can easily exceed the price of the ICT system itself over time. A typical factory using Cover-Extend on 30 lines can potentially save up to $500,000 per year, Agilent reports. In addition, the technology provides strain relief on solder joints, resulting from fewer test probes needed underneath high-density ICs (for instance, ball-grid arrays), greatly reducing potential solder-joint damage due to excessive strain. www.agilent.com.

Credence Systems, which is continuing its focus on automated test equipment (ATE) for the semiconductor industry, has announced the sale of its diagnostics and characterization business to DCG Systems, an independent company led by Dr. Israel Niv, the founder of Optonics and the GM of Credence’s Diagnostics and Characterization Group from January 2003 to February 2005. Under the agreement, Credence will receive up to $10 million for the business.

Products covered in the transaction include the recently introduced Ruby laser voltage prober, the OptiFIB-IV focused ion-beam system, the Meridian-IV emission system, and the NEXS suite of EDA link software. In addition, DCG Systems will offer the EmiScope, TriVision, and P3X instruments. The newly formed DCG Systems will be headquartered in Fremont, CA. www.credence.com.

TÜV SÜD America reports that its Danvers, MA, facility has been granted a scope extension by the International Electrotechnical Commission of Electrical Engineers (IECEE), the worldwide system for conformity testing and certification of electrical equipment and components. With this extension, TÜV SÜD America, a testing and certification firm, is now accredited to test products to 25 IEC standards.

The CB scope extension gives TÜV SÜD America continued testing capabilities in the OFF (IT and office equipment) category and additional testing capabilities in the MEAS (measuring instruments), MED (electrical equipment for medical use), HOUS (household and similar equipment), and TRON (electronics entertainment) categories. “I am very pleased that we can now offer a much broader scope of CB certificates,” said Joe Janeliunas, senior compliance manager for TÜV SÜD America. “CB work is important for our customers because it allows them to market their product in most parts of the world.” www.TUVamerica.com.

IP performance test system provider Ixia has opened iSimCity, a proof-of-concept lab and executive briefing center in Santa Clara, CA. The company has also conducted a city-scale demonstration on ensuring quality-of-experience (QoE) in high-performance, converged multiplay networks.

With the ability to conduct city-scale testing with Ixia products at iSimCity, customers can access thousands of test ports and aggregate traffic in the range of 10 to 100 Gbps, emulate thousands of subscribers/users, and generate millions of routes with thousands of routing peers. They can also conduct system testing by emulating dozens of infrastructure servers, including load balancers, denial of service defenders, switches, routers, video servers, SIP proxies, and DNS and DHCP servers. www.ixiacom.com.

Aries Electronics’ new high-frequency center-probe test sockets operate to 18 GHz and accommodate devices measuring up to 13 mm². Available in four versions with ratings of 1 to 3 GHz, 3 to 5 GHz, 5 to 9 GHz, and 10 to 18 GHz, the new sockets serve in high-speed testing of devices in packages including CSPs, µBGAs, and LGAs with pitches as low as 0.40 mm.

The sockets’ solderless, pressure-mount, compression-spring probes allow for easy mounting to and removal from a test board. A four-point crown ensures adequate scrub on solder balls for reliable contact mating, and a raised tip probe ensures adequate scrub on pads. The new sockets provide minimal signal loss for higher bandwidth capability via a signal path measuring only 0.077 in. Overall socket size is 1.200x0.840x0.440 in. Pin inductance is 0.59 nH at 0.50-mm pitch; mutual capacitance is 0.12 pF, and contact resistance is less than 40 mΩ.

The compression-spring probes in the new RF sockets are constructed of durable heat-treated beryllium-copper alloy, plated with 0.75-µm gold over 0.75-µm nickel. All hardware is stainless steel. Contact forces range from 16 g to 25 g per contact, depending on pitch. Operating temperature is –55°C to 150°C, and estimated contact life is more than 500,000 cycles.

Base price: $330. Aries Electronics, www.arieselec.com.

Anritsu’s MW90010A Coherent OTDR (C-OTDR) can detect faults in optical cables up to 12,000 km long, even with multiple repeaters in the cable. And because it collects 1.2 million data points, the MW90010A is able to detect faults with 10-m resolution at the 12,000-km length. A built-in tunable light source covers the 1535.03-nm to 1565.08-nm wavelength range with 0.2% accuracy. The instrument pulses that light with widths of 3, 10, 30, 60, or 100 µs with adjustable output power from 0 dBm to +13 dBm. It has a dynamic range of >17 dB at cable distances of 1000 km.

Once it makes a measurement, the MW90010A displays a graph representing the cable showing where faults occur. It lets you store waveforms, and it displays up to eight waveforms at once, letting you compare current to previous measurements and monitor performance as a cable ages. It also features measurements such as splice loss and decibels/kilometer loss, and you can display distance in miles, feet, kilofeet, meters, or kilometers. You can store measurements in the instrument’s 2.8-Gbyte internal memory, or you can transfer data to an external USB memory device. The instrument produces reports in pdf format that you can store and print.

Base price $400,000. Anritsu, www.us.anritsu.com.

Design Automation Conference (DAC), June 8–13, Anaheim, CA. Sponsored by IEEE, ACM, and EDA Consortium. www.dac.com.

The Vision Show, June 10–12, Boston, MA. Sponsored by the Automated Imaging Association, www.machinevisiononline.org.

International Microwave Symposium, June 15–20, Atlanta, GA. Sponsored by IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S), www.ims2008.org.

To learn about other conferences, courses, and calls for papers, visit www.tmworld.com/events.