What is JTagging?
JTagging is a means of testing board applications remotely to repair and reduce problems while in the production stage and improve product quality through the JTAG or boundary scan technology. JTAG stands for Joint Test Action Group, developed in 1980 and became an IEEE 1149.1 standard back in 1990. JTAG was originally developed to check on issues concerning the manufacture of electronic boards, but it can also be used in probing ports, prototyping, programming, and debugging.

In the 1990s, JTAG testing or JTagging helped in testing the interconnects of a particular board’s integrated circuits. This testing is done without the need of physical probes. Instead, boundary scan cells were added to capture data needed for such testing. This would result to test times becoming shorter, increased in test coverage and diagnostics. It also resulted to lower costs in terms of capitalization for equipments. This made many industry players to adopt the technology especially in areas like telecommunications, defense systems, consumer goods, computer peripherals, and avionics among others.

Because of reduced test times, JTAG technology helps in reducing production time leading to faster delivery to the market of particular products. And if products are released earlier to the market, this would mean a decrease in production costs for manufacturers. Products released are of a higher quality because of JTAG’s diagnostic capabilities during the production phase. It also offers convenience to programmers in terms of the possibility of tinkering with programming issues without the need for disassembling electronic boards.

With all its benefits to the manufacturing and business aspects of technology, JTAG is widely received by many companies today. It has proven to be easy and quick to apply and more importantly, it offers very effective board testing and is inexpensive to deploy as it can also work on low-cost PC platforms.