on Sep 15, 2011Panel Discussion: “In-Circuit Test: The King is Dead; Long Live the King!”
When: Wed, Sep 21, 10.30am~12nn
Where: Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, California
Agilent is participating and leading (by Jun Balangue) a panel discussion on the above topic. There will be motions presented by a panel of 4 leading engineers from major companies; Intel, Cisco, Dell, Teradyne, and Agilent, regarding the question of the future of In-Circuit test in the industry. Does board test manufacturing need a new generation of board test system or does current In-Circuit Test (ICT) have sufficient features to test PCBAs for the next 10 years and beyond?
Panel Objective:
The objective of the panel is to have a good and honest discussion between board test industry experts about the future of ICT. The panel consists of experts from various part of the industry and grouped according to the following:
1. Board Test Managers/Experts from the Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM),Contract Manufacturing (CM) and Original Design Manufacturing (ODM) side who strongly believe that the current ICT system is insufficient to test the new generation of PCBA.
2. ICT Marketing Manager/experts from ICT supplier (Agilent/Teradyne/TRI) who believes that the current ICT system has enough capabilities and features to maintain test coverage and cost needs for new generation of PCBA.
3. Board test Managers/Expert at OEM/CM/ODM who depend on the ICT system for their main board test strategy and have invested substantial ICT equipment and infrastructure in their manufacturing.
Organizer: Jun Balangue
Moderator: Dave Dubberke (Intel)
Panelists:
Steve Butkovich – Cisco
Phil Geiger – Dell
Tony Suto – Teradyne
Ken Parker – Agilent
Additional information at
http://www.itctestweek.org/
When: Wed, Sep 21, 10.30am~12nn
Where: Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, California
Agilent is participating and leading (by Jun Balangue) a panel discussion on the above topic. There will be motions presented by a panel of 4 leading engineers from major companies; Intel, Cisco, Dell, Teradyne, and Agilent, regarding the question of the future of In-Circuit test in the industry. Does board test manufacturing need a new generation of board test system or does current In-Circuit Test (ICT) have sufficient features to test PCBAs for the next 10 years and beyond?
Panel Objective:
The objective of the panel is to have a good and honest discussion between board test industry experts about the future of ICT. The panel consists of experts from various part of the industry and grouped according to the following:
1. Board Test Managers/Experts from the Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM),Contract Manufacturing (CM) and Original Design Manufacturing (ODM) side who strongly believe that the current ICT system is insufficient to test the new generation of PCBA.
2. ICT Marketing Manager/experts from ICT supplier (Agilent/Teradyne/TRI) who believes that the current ICT system has enough capabilities and features to maintain test coverage and cost needs for new generation of PCBA.
3. Board test Managers/Expert at OEM/CM/ODM who depend on the ICT system for their main board test strategy and have invested substantial ICT equipment and infrastructure in their manufacturing.
Organizer: Jun Balangue
Moderator: Dave Dubberke (Intel)
Panelists:
Steve Butkovich – Cisco
Phil Geiger – Dell
Tony Suto – Teradyne
Ken Parker – Agilent
Additional information at
http://www.itctestweek.org/
The Panel Discussion was a success with lively discussions from more than 100 attendees that participated through the 1.5hrs of discussion. The attendees included personalities like Bob Oaks(Apple), Richard Boyde (Plexus), Christophe (Aster), Mark Bisceglia (EMC), Adam Ley (Asset), to name a few as well as representatives from Tektronics, National Instruments, Teradyne.
Following are excerpts of the discussion.
Ken Parker (Agilent) talked about ICT systems (hardware and software) are constantly being updated with new features to address the challenges of today's PCB testing.
Phil Geiger (Dell) advocates boundary scan as a "saviour" for ICT, as test access erodes from PCBs due to increasing device pin out, number of high speed signals, transition to SMT only connectors, etc. He urges that new boundary scan standards must be adopted rapidly in product designs. ODMs, OEMs and CMs must drive the use of boundary scan to their suppliers.
Steve Butkovich (Cisco) observes that technology is actually "killing ICT". The increasing complexity of products is driving the 40-year-old ICT techniques to its limits. For example, some newer methods of BIST or Hybrid functional test do not work on ICT platforms. He believes that escaping the design burdens of ICT will provide a technical advantage to products. He suggests that alternate methods combining with functional test or boundary scan based testers are needed.
Tony Suto (Teradyne) observes that ICT provides the most economical solution for controllability and observability ofprocess defects.
Bob Oakes (Apple) shares that he is successful in keeping the ICT development in-house and working with a reliable fixture vendor delivers their need for rapid product releases with high quality testing. They still use the conventional ICT + Functional test strategy.
Other comments and questions include:
1. If you have a high volume of 100k-500k per month what will you use?
Almost everybody agreed that it will be ICT + Functional with the exception of Steve who says that some of their high volume boards use ICT sampling test and full functional test.
2. National Instruments said they still build their boards in-house and they are successful with only functional test as this gives them exact control of their specification. Although she admits that is a low volume high mixed product.
3. Mark Biscegla (EMC) although he is a strong supporter of CPU emulation, is an ICT expert and still believes that having the ICT development in house does the trick for him.
Conclusion:
1. ICT is not dead and will continue to live, at least, for Automotive and Industrial products.
2. Netcom, High End Server, Computing segments will continue to face with challenges on test access, but the presence of internal ICT experts mitigate this.
3. ICT remains as the first choice for most OEMs, even in the Netcom, High End Server, Computing segments, but they are looking for alternatives
The discussion closed with an intention to have a follow up session next year.