Surviving state disruptions caused by test: A case study

The practice of initializing a board or system for testing purposes is not an exact science, but rather, pursued empirically and with an increasing risk of undesired side effects. It has been suspected that Boundary-Scan testing can cause such side effects. This paper provides a case study of such a board where a detailed root-cause analysis was performed. Some issues are identified that justify adding features to IEEE 1149.1 that will facilitate safe, fast and effective initialization of a board or system, to get it ready for testing and to leave it in a safe state upon completion of testing.