The legacy technologies that have been employed during board bring-up have their limitations. Some, like manufacturing defect analysis (MDA) and in-circuit test (ICT) systems, involve fixtures that are very expensive and time-consuming to design and assemble. And any design change on the board will necessitate another set of expensive fixtures and long delays while they are fabricated. Other types of test equipment, like oscilloscopes and logic analyzers, may not require a fixture, but they are expensive and finding physical access for the probes they rely on for high-speed I/O testing is like finding a needle in a haystack. Test pads are disappearing from boards and device pins are hidden underneath silicon.
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