BP Microsystems has added in-system programming (ISP) to its portfolio of programmers. There has been an ongoing trend in the industry to program devices in-circuit to reduce costs by integrating device programming as part of the line. Some customers use in-circuit testers (ICT) or custom solutions to program devices on-board. However, ICT is expensive and can be overly complex for the programming function. As programming times increase, the tester can become a bottleneck, and the user must decide to add equipment capacity. In addition, developing in-house ISP equipment requires engineering expertise and maintenance overhead. Additionally, the test engineer must write and maintain the test programs to make sure that the devices are programmed correctly. As technology or capacity requirements change, users are faced with this dilemma: buy more tester, design custom equipment or preprogram devices off-line? This ISP solutions feature single-site engineering and multi-site concurrent programmers, and are versatile tools that give users the flexibility to accomplish either of these tasks using only a single system. The programmer can be connected to the board via a cable using a custom-socket or using a 48pin-DIP-socket unit. As an alternative, some customers choose a bed-of-nails fixture to interface with the board. In either case, BP simply requests that the user provide a sample board, interface hardware and pin mapping so that the device algorithm may be both updated and tested. After programming the device in-circuit, users can verify its functionality to determine that it works correctly. If problems are encountered with the device, the board can be programmed on the programmer. This ensures the flexibility needed to rerun or rework boards. Another key benefit to using ISP is that the company offers expertise in writing device algorithms, supporting more than 21,000 devices. Individual ISP algorithm requests can be processed and added, providing additional support.
EPP EUROPE 460
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