GOEPEL Combines Boundary Scan with NI FlexRIO
October 15, 2012. GOEPEL electronic said it has developed a boundary-scan option for National Instruments‘ PXI/PXIe FlexRIO cards. The solution enables the utilization of the FPGA-based FlexRIO hardware as a boundary-scan I/O module. That provides users a range of supplemental test strategies for an increase in structural test depth for prototypes or in the production process.
The new boundary-scan option is based on the utilization of a customer-specific adapter module for the FlexRIO PXIe-7962R card combined with specially developed boundary-scan IP (intellectual property) for the onboard FPGA. The FlexRIO adapter MDK (module development kit) was used to develop the adapter module. For the boundary scan IP integration an appropriate VHDL design was compiled as component level intellectual property (CLIP). The entire handling is executed via the NI LabVIEW FPGA software. GOEPEL electronic additionally provides a hardware support package including VHDL source code for individual boundary-scan adaptations.
The configured module supports all boundary-scan procedures such as automatic interconnection test with pin-failure diagnosis, automatic cluster test with pin-failure diagnosis, and hardware debugging. A SYSTEM CASCON run-time version is utilized as boundary-scan software, also controlled from LabVIEW via an API (application programming interface).
“Technologies such as boundary scan and FlexRIO are fundamentally important [for] the testing of our products,” said Antonio Cardinale, senior test manager with SELEX Galileo. “The successful cooperation with GOEPEL electronic provides us a highly efficient utilization of the PXI Express FlexRIO modules. We are now in an excellent position to interlock structural and functional test strategies even deeper on one test platform.”
“National Instruments’ PXI and PXI Express based FlexRIO modules offer an unrivalled flexibility for numerous instruments and applications,” added Rahman Jamal, technical and marketing director for Europe with National Instruments. “In this sense, the newly developed boundary scan adaption is an important step towards this potential’s practical implementation.”
“Our boundary-scan solutions have been used by major primes for many years. Thanks to the extraordinary cooperation with SELEX Galileo we were able to implement the project for FlexRIO support within a few weeks,” said Bettina Richter, GOEPEL electronic’s marketing manager. “We understand such customer-specific development projects as integral part of our customer support, providing important information on perspective market requirements.”