At-Speed Test of SMBus Integrity over JTAG

Testonica introduces a new instrument for testing SMBus communication busses and peripheral devices as a part of its Quick Instruments portfolio.

System Management Bus protocol is widely used for light-weight communication with on-board peripheral devices such as clock signal generators, power controllers, temperature/voltage sensors, etc. SMBus protocol was originally developed as an advanced version of well-known I²C protocol. By adding more strict timings, the SMBus protocol delivers a considerably higher performance and better stability than its I²C predecessor.

Due to the strict timing specification, SMBus is difficult to test with conventional methods such as JTAG/Boundary Scan – the test speed is just not enough to follow the frequency and timeout requirements of the protocol. New QI test instrument is designed to overcome those limitations and facilitate testing of SMBus communication links. It is fully compliant with SMBus standard and is capable for up to several MHz of communication speed. Moreover, the instrument is backward-compatible with I²C standard, hence is suitable for checking I²C busses/devices as well.

The instrument and delivers excellent performance of data exchange, thus it can also be used for rapid configuration of SMBus peripherals i.e. setting up hundreds of internal registers of a clock synthesizer, quickly programming large EEPROM device, and so on. The instrument is controlled over the JTAG bus, hence allowing an easy integration with existing test systems.

Quick Instruments is an Embedded Functional Test and Measurement Platform that converts a programmable device such as an FPGA into an embedded tester. The technology helps customers screening defects fast and early. Thanks to the patented embedded instrumentation technology, large in-house Test & Measurement IP library and fully automated test synthesis cloud, QI platform helped numerous businesses in over 20 countries taking care of everyday testing needs as well as challenging quality issues. Find out more on Quick Instruments