Jul 13, 2011 GOEPEL electronic, worldwide leading vendor of JTAG/Boundary Scan solutions has developed special VarioTAP® IPs for testing the new generation femtocell chips in cooperation with Picochip. The solution enables dynamic processor emulation tests (PET) for fault detection and diagnostic on board and system level, as well as supporting embedded Flash programming.
“Picochip is the leading company in the femtocell space. The target of the cooperation with Picochip was to support the innovative applications of their new femtocell devices with the latest test strategies”, explains Karl Miles, Manager (UK & Ireland) with GOEPEL electronics Ltd. “We achieved this goal with the release of our latest VarioTAP IP. Picochip’s customers can utilise not only our JTAG/Boundary Scan capability but also our emulation capability for testing and programming in a fully integrated solution starting at the design stage and through the product cycle to production. This allows them to accelerate test development and get their innovative products to market faster and more cost-effectively”.
“Our SoC products are changing the way carriers build their HSPA and LTE networks”, says Jackie Barker, V P Operations for Picochip. “GOEPEL electronic’s VarioTAP test strategy – particularly developed for our chips – makes an important contribution to accelerating transfer from design-ins to production and to guarantee the required test quality. Thanks to this we were able to test and bring-up the PC500 in an extremely efficient manner”.
The PC500 is the latest device from Picochip, and is a high-performance baseband processor especially designed for ‘small cell’ systems. It supports both FDD and TDD versions of LTE as well as dual-mode with HSPA.
VarioTAP® converts this processor via the standard debug port to a native design embedded test and programming controller. In addition to Boundary Scan, the strategy known as processor emulation test (PET) is currently the most modern method in the area of embedded test access technologies and enables a functional at-speed test of chips, boards and complete systems.
