Virtual JTAG Intel® FPGA IP Core User Guide

ID 683705
Date 8/12/2021
Public
Document Table of Contents

JTAG Protocol

The original intent of the JTAG protocol (standardized as IEEE 1149.1) was to simplify PCB interconnectivity testing during the manufacturing stage. As access to integrated circuit (IC) pins became more limited due to tighter lead spacing and FPGA packages, testing through traditional probing techniques, such as “bed-of-nails” test fixtures, became infeasible. The JTAG protocol alleviates the need for physical access to IC pins via a shift register chain placed near the I/O ring. This set of registers near the I/O ring, also known as boundary scan cells (BSCs), samples and forces values out onto the I/O pins. The BSCs from JTAG‑compliant ICs are daisy‑chained into a serial-shift chain and driven via a serial interface.

During boundary scan testing, software shifts out test data over the serial interface to the BSCs of select ICs. This test data forces a known pattern to the pins connected to the affected BSCs. If the adjacent IC at the other end of the PCB trace is JTAG‑compliant, the BSC of the adjacent IC samples the test pattern and feeds the BSCs back to the software for analysis. The figure below illustrates the boundary-scan testing concept.

Figure 3. IEEE Std. 1149.1 Boundary-Scan Testing

Because the JTAG interface shifts in any information to the device, leaves a low footprint, and is available on all Intel® devices, it is considered a general purpose communication interface. In addition to boundary scan applications, Intel® devices use the JTAG port for other applications, such as device configuration and on‑chip debugging features available in the Intel® Quartus® Prime software.