Smartbits Systems Dramatically Increases Production Yields
Through use of Corelis' ScanExpress
Boundary-Scan Tester
Smartbits
Systems, a SPIRENT COMMUNICATIONS company, specializes in
high-performance analysis and measurement systems for the
networking industry, data service providers, and end-users
worldwide.
“To achieve complex product
functionality in small size packages, Smartbits Systems is
developing and producing densely populated boards with many
high-speed BGA parts,” said Surin Shaw, Test Engineering Manager
at Smartbits Systems.
When previously testing Smartbits
Systems’ densely populated boards, Mr. Shaw noticed an
increasing failure rate and lower yields as the boards became
more dense. In advance of new products and technologies where
the migration of BGA components into the design was imminent,
Smartbits Systems needed new tools to detect shorts and opens
underneath the BGA components. X-ray was one option but is not
fully effective at detecting opens. At that point, Mr. Shaw
decided to look for test methods that will find interconnect and
other manufacturing defects prior to running the functional
test. Considering various alternatives, boundary-scan appeared
to be the right solution for these types of problems.
Corelis was selected as one of the
potential boundary-scan tool vendors and a careful analysis was
done of the capabilities and ease-of-use of the available
products for boundary-scan. Corelis’ superb pre-sale support,
the ease at which Corelis’ system handled tasks such as
generating test vectors and subsequent committed technical
support, convinced Mr. Shaw that Corelis was the vendor and
partner of choice.
As Surin Shaw puts it, “The Corelis
system saves a lot of time. Tests are run in seconds saving
hours of trouble-shooting. Functional test only tells you that
the board or device is dead. Boundary-scan tells you where the
fault is. The system also can tell if there is a missing
resistor, as an open is created. We have been using Corelis’
boundary-scan testers for the last 10 new product releases and
it has proven to be invaluable.”
“The results were above
expectations.” Added Surin. “Interconnect and other production
failures have been solved and moreover, boundary-scan
methodology made the solution easy to implement. With the
volatility of the market that Smartbits System addresses with
its products, it is essential that time-to-market be minimized
and product quality be the highest possible. With Corelis
boundary-scan tools, Smartbits Systems found both a solution and
a committed partner.”
Mr. Shaw was so impressed with the
added value of boundary-scan and Corelis’ ScanExpress boundary-scan
test tools, that he is incorporating boundary-scan testability
into all new product designs at Smartbits Systems.
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