TI leads adoption of IEEE 1149.7 standard for improved JTAG functionality

HOUSTON, USA: The ratification of the new IEEE 1149.7 test and debug standard represents a major expansion and improvement of JTAG functionality.

Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) led the IEEE working group in the definition and adoption of the new two-pin IEEE 1149.7 standard, which improves debug capabilities and power constraints for system-on-chip (SoC) architectures.

Additionally, with the standard's reduced number of pins and traces for smaller form factors, developers of mobile and handheld communications devices can leverage TI's OMAP 4 platform, which is the industry's first applications processor platform to incorporate this new standard. This allows developers to easily test and debug products with complex digital circuitry, multiple CPUs and applications software.

IEEE 1149.7 key features and benefits:
* Compatibility with legacy IEEE 1149.1 devices and IP allows designers to smoothly transition to IEEE 1149.7 while preserving investments and without incurring additional costs.
* Supports half the pins of the IEEE 1149.1 standard, which simplifies stacked-die configurations and decreases device costs and package size.
* Provides a standard gateway to access other test and debug standards such as IEEE 1149.1, IEEE 1500 and IEEE P1687.
* Four power-down modes eases board and chip testing and applications debugging for power sensitive products.
* Shorter scan chain lengths allows for faster debug operations and support for background data transfers concurrent with debug transactions.