Keysight Introduces Massively Parallel Board Test System

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Keysight Technologies, Inc., a leading technology company that helps enterprises, service providers and governments accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, has introduced the new i7090 massively parallel board test system. This is a new category of automated test equipment designed to perform tests in parallel, on multiple printed circuit board assemblies (PCBA), to achieve high volume throughput which speeds time-to-market and reduces cost-of-test.

Current systems on the market only support up to four cores in parallel. Customers need to test and purchase more systems to meet manufacturing demands, incurring scale and infrastructure costs, a larger footprint and additional labor for support and maintenance.

Keysight’s new massively parallel board test system supports up to 20 cores in parallel with PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation (PXI) based in-circuit test capability. As a result, core configuration is variable and not confined to a fixed number of rows, which reduces overall computing costs. To expand functionality, Keysight OpenTAP support enables open platforms for integration of hardware. As needed, and with extensible instrumentation and pin cards, users can easily scale resources.

“Massively parallel computation cores enable modern computers to deliver breakthrough performance. The i7090 board test system brings a similar capability into printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) manufacturing test and programming,” said Christopher Cain, vice president of Keysight’s Electronic Industrial Products. “The i7090 has an innovative modular architecture that delivers breakthrough throughput in a small footprint. It is infused with state-of-the-art Industry 4.0 automation and analytics to deliver unparalleled capability that can be optimized for a broad variety of high-volume PCBA manufacturing challenges.”

Keysight’s new i7090 delivers the following key benefits: 

• Twenty parallel cores deliver flexible scalability and configuration, as well as the ability to perform tests on multiple units.
• A small system footprint, 600 mm in width, saves space and cycle time.
• High to ultra high-volume manufacturing reduces system investment and supports production test times as needed.
• Unpowered and vectorless test extended performance (VTEP) technologies for rapid test throughput, reduced cost fixtures and high fault coverage.
• Instrument integration with Keysight OpenTAP software, within the same platform, for efficient functional test measurements and PXI support for Keysight and 3rd party instruments.
• Support for multi-platform hardware in a standard 48 cm rack for functional integration.
• Programming function integration provides in-system programming with 160 channels in parallel, increasing system throughput.