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ANAHEIM, CALIF. - The three top contenders in board testers, GenRad, Hewlett-Packard and Teradyne, squared off once again with competing announcements at the recent Nepcon West '97 show here.
GenRad Inc. (Concord, Mass. ) unwrapped its advanced GR2287LX production test system, aimed at emerging devicepackaging technologies, while Hewlett-Packard Co. (Palo Alto, Calif.) revealed a "refinement" called the HP Performance Port that permits, for the first time, integration of existing test-head configurations. For its part, Teradyne Inc. (Boston) launched two major board-level products: its first "flying prober" in-circuit test system and a low-cost member of Teradyne's Z 1800 family of in-circuit machines.
The GR2287LX is billed as GenRad's second generation of high-node-count testers. The system handles ball-grid arrays and multichip modules, allowing for device pin counts that exceed 1,800 pins. "We continue to see a drive to integrate complex products down to a single printed-circuit card, which drives up integration at the device level," said Kevin Cloutier, vice president and general manage of electronic manufacturing systems at GenRad. "The GR2287LX addresses high-pin-count device technologies today and anticipates the growth of this trend in the future."
Diverse family
The GR2287LX is part of GenRad's N8xT 2000 Production Test System product family. It comes in a variety of configurations, enabling contract manufacturers and OEMs to put together a system that meets their node-count and compatibility requirements. "We had two principal objectives in designing the GR2287LX," said Bob Muller, director of engineering at GenRad. "We sought to double the count of device pins available to the user without altering the fixture interface or footprint of the machine. Second, considering the complexity of the boards to be tested, we wouldn't compromise the performance specs of the tester pin."
Meanwhile, GenRad also unveiled...