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May 2014 • SMT Magazine 71 on which it is based, but it is six times smaller. Its small footprint, high-density pin fields and snap together modules result in a very compact electrical test subsystem that is easy to integrate into a wide variety of automation equipment, either inline or offline as part of manual work cells (Figure 4). It is designed to be easy to service and has short connection paths that provide excellent signal integrity. achieving Faster Equipment Speeds Multisite testing is a concept pioneered by manufacturers of semiconductor chip test equipment. Multisite test systems allowed chip manufacturers to test multiple devices in pa- rallel by providing duplicate instruments in their test systems that support testing of more than one device at a time. While examining the characteristics of PCBs being built by high-volume automated assem- bly lines, it was noted that a large majority of these products are built as part of panelized as- semblies—the same identical board replicated on a panel multiple times. Panelized assemblies are employed by manufacturers to optimize the performance of the assembly equipment and improve line utilization. The problem is that the performance of most ICT systems does not improve when tes- ting panelized boards because the ICT system has limited instruments and can only support testing one board at a time. For example, the test time required to test a 4-board panel on Figure 4: iCT Subsystem designed for easy integration. figure 5: example of semiconductor multisite interface board. THE CHaNGING ECoNomICS oF IN-CIRCUIT TEST continues feATuRe