Easy to build large-scale energy-efficient test farms

SEGGER has introduced the Test Farm Power Adapter, which, together with the J-Link PRO, makes building energy-efficient, large-scale test farms easy.

A test farm is a way to make many systems easily available across a network to any amount of users for manual or automated testing. Users can connect to any board in the test farm over the network. It is feasible to control power, download firmware, debug, run, and test software on multiple devices simultaneously. Users can access devices from anywhere worldwide employing the J-Link Remote Server software or via remote access to the LAN, typically employing a VPN tunnel.

Automated build systems may run tests on the same standard setup, which is ideal for regression testing, compiler tests, continuous integration, and more. Test farms can also be set up to provide access to the same hardware in different configurations or to enable users to connect to various completely different boards and with a variety of toolchains.

The company's energy-efficient J-Link PRO with Ethernet interface, togethger with the test farm adapter, creates an ideal foundation for any fully-scalable mass testing and debugging solution for embedded systems.

Devices under test can be turned off as a power-saving measure if no test is running. They may also be power cycled and rebooted, which can be very useful in the testing process.

"Automated testing is a very important part of quality assurance," says Rolf Segger, founder of SEGGER. "There is no replacement for a test farm. It makes it possible to verify things that can't be tested in simulation, such as the performance and stability of hardware. It is also the only way to eliminate concerns about the correctness of the simulator itself. We use test farms internally in our J-Link and Flasher departments as well as for compiler performance and regression testing."