Method and apparatus to provide a burn-in board with increased monitoring capacity

Abstract

A method and apparatus are described for allowing the testing and monitoring of an increased number of device on a standard burn-in board by implementing a PLD and a group of switches to get the result of a multiplexor on the burn-in board. The test data output (TDO) signals from the integrated circuit devices are segmented into groups, with each group of TDO signals transmitted to a particular group of switches. A programmable logic device is coupled to the groups of switches such that a specific group of switches may be selected to transmit the TDO signals of the selected group of switches. The remaining groups of switches are selected, in turn, until all of the TDO signals have been transmitted. Thus, the TDO signals from an increased number of integrated circuit devices may be transmitted, serially, via a limited number of monitoring channels.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.