JTAG's PMBusProg For In-System Programming Of Power Management Devices

Peter van den Eijnden, MD of JTAG Technologies, explains some of the background of PMBusProg. “While the individual IC vendors generally offer their own solution for programming parts ‘in-system’ these are seldom robust enough for the factory environment nor are they ‘integratable’ into existing board test systems. By developing PMBusProg we were responding to customer’s demands who were looking for a fast convenient solution that could run on existing hardware and be integrated into existing test platforms.“



Interested parties might like to note that PMBusProg runs on all DataBlaster controllers from JTAG Technologies and can be used to access PMBus pins via local JTAG (boundary-scan) compliant devices or directly from an external Digital IO Scan module.



SCIP programming solutions were originally devised to program the embedded memories of microprocessors and microcontrollers that featured a JTAG or similar port such as BDM. The range has now been expanded however to cover numerous other protocols such as those used by Microchip PIC, Freescale HCS08 and now PMBus. Where necessary the SCIP family employs Scan Configurable Interface Logic hardware interface modules. These are ‘swappable’ interfaces that can convert a JTAG hardware controller into a protocol-specific device programmer or tester.



It is this modular combination of SCIL hardware and SCIP software routines that makes it easy for manufacturers of PCBs featuring multi-vendor, multi-protocol processors to configure a universal in-system programming platform for production.



Van den Eijnden concludes: “SCIP is not a single product but an array of support options that users can select to satisfy their device programming requirements. Use of SCIP functions allows customer to get more from their JTAG tools investment and increase the board coverage.”