Production Board Test

The rack and controller card between the original Alliance and Alliance 2G are unique and therefore the individual supplies cannot be mixed in the same rack. An Alliance 2G supply rack is necessary for the installation of the new Alliance 2G supplies. Only Alliance 2G power supplies can be placed in the Alliance 2G rack.

The Alliance 2G supplies can be installed in UltraPin I or UltraPin II test systems but require the upgrade to the Alliance 2G Rack Assembly at the same time. The individual Alliance 2G power supplies cannot be mixed with the original Alliance power supplies in the same rack. An additional Alliance 2G power supply rack needs to be purchased for the Alliance 2G power supplies to be installed.

Teradyne is not supporting upgrading these older model machines with the Alliance 2G. There is no migration path or testing that has been completed on how the rack and supplies work in these older machines.

No, but to take advantage of the enhanced performance characteristics of the Alliance 2G supplies, testers must have version 6.4.0 or later installed on their tester.

The quantity and type of installed Alliance power supplies will be listed in the Hardware Report generated in the TestStation development software. The new Alliance 2G power supplies will have black thumbscrews on the faceplate.

The Alliance 2G power supplies are designed to be program and fixture compatible with the original Alliance supplies. The Alliance 2G supplies have two modes of operation with regard to execution speed: standard mode and enhanced mode. Standard mode is the default mode of operation when the Alliance 2G supplies are installed on testers running software versions prior to 6.4.0. Standard mode was designed to closely match the execution speed of the original Alliance supplies and was created to maintain backward compatibility with existing customer applications. The primary issue was in regard to how quickly supplies defined in a sequence ramp up with respect to each other. The Enhanced mode of operation runs the Alliance 2G supplies at a faster execution speed and it is the default mode when running on the latest version of TestStation system software. Operators can set the execution speed back to Standard mode if they discover that the faster execution speeds cause an application to fail.

Users will experience improved throughput in the execution speeds for the new Alliance 2G power supplies compared to the original Alliance power supplies. The faster performance is visible to the user in two areas: initializing the power supplies when first entering the run time and when executing power supply sequencing commands.

For a tester configured with 7 Alliance 2G power supplies in a single rack, the user can expect the following: 2X improvement of the Alliance 2G power supply initialization time (including sequence definition) during boot compared to the original Alliance power supply initialization time. The power supply initialization time improved to approximately 10 seconds from the original 23 seconds. A 15% execution speed throughput improvement when operating in Standard Mode or a 65% execution speed throughput improvement when using the Enhanced Mode for 3 power supply sequences in a single test run. Execution time for each test run improved from 2.3 seconds to 1.9 seconds in Standard Mode and the execution time was twice as fast in Enhanced Mode as each test run improved from 2.3 seconds to 0.8 seconds.

There are no changes to the System Test or Diagnostic Programs for the Alliance 2G power supplies. The same System Test Fixture and System Load Box are used for testing both the original Alliance supplies and the Alliance 2G supplies.

You can order the Alliance 2G power supplies by contacting your local Teradyne representative.

Available Alliance 2G Power Supplies options:

• Alliance 2G 0-7V@15A
• Alliance 2G 0-20V@8A
• Alliance 2G [email protected]

Note: A power supply race is required for each set of 7 power supplies.

The original Alliance power supply entered end-of-production January 31, 2012. Teradyne will support the discontinued Alliance power supply for a minimum of 5 years after active production ends, and then “best commercial efforts” thereafter.

All existing Teradyne software versions will support the Alliance 2G power supplies. Older versions of software can only run the Alliance 2G supplies in standard mode.

No, the Alliance 2G power supplies are compatible with existing test programs and fixtures.