Company Profile

Circuit Spectrum has been in business since 1986, supplying their customers with interface boards for several types of test equipment. Manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard, LTX, Advantest, Schlumberger, and Teradyne have qualified Circuit Spectrum as a manufacturer of interface boards for their testers. Boards for logic, memory, and mixed-signal testers are included in their product line. Circuit Spectrum designs full custom boards and also offers a line of generic boards for some testers. Some of these boards are designed for manual insertion testing and others for use with an automatic handler or prober.

Additionally, Circuit Spectrum provides design services for general application boards such as those used in benchtop test applications. With the state of the art, versatile CAD software used at Circuit Spectrum, the designers are able to produce very complex, high performance boards. They have designed boards for high speed applications with transmission line length matching and controlled impedance traces, and high density applications using surface mount devices and conventional packages.

The founder and president of the company, Zaven Tashjian, has a Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering. He has worked for many years in semiconductor test and systems manufacturing. Using his technical expertise he can understand the testing challenges faced by his customers, and often works with his customer's engineering group in defining the design specifications.

Circuit Spectrum has many out of town customers who are very pleased with the products and service they have received. This is due to the personal attention each customer receives and attention to detail that is found in each Circuit Spectrum employee.

"I need to work with someone who understands what I am talking about and can help me sort out the details of the designs."

Interface boards are often a key element in the schedule for a new product qualification. Due to the many design-related details surrounding these boards, it is important to ask the right questions to avoid producing a board which, when delivered, is unsatisfactory. This is where the years of experience and technical expertise of Circuit Spectrum will prove beneficial. They will work out the details with the customer to be certain that the end product is reliable and meets all the requirements of the design.

"My interface boards get hard use on the production floor. How can I make sure these boards will be reliable?"

Using state of the art layout packages and exhaustive cross-checking by designers assures that a printed circuit board from Circuit Spectrum will work the first time. Much consideration is given to the design on the front end to assure that the boards are not fragile and can withstand the rigors of a production area.

"My boards require controlled impedance transmission lines with matched propagation delays. How can I achieve this for every interconnection on the board?"

At Circuit Spectrum, the designers are familiar with high performance board design and will offer workable solutions to many of the problems in high speed testing.

Questions such as:

How do I implement low-inductance connections to power and ground planes?
What sort of feed-through holes minimize unwanted capacitance?
How can I be sure my traces are truly 50 ohm?

These are all issues that Circuit Spectrum's designers have dealt with many times. Their expertise and powerful CAD tools allow them to guarantee propagation delay matching to +/-5 picoseconds. Time domain reflectometry (TDR) data can be supplied for any board designed by Circuit Spectrum. For impedance controlled lines, microstrip or stripline techniques are used. Not only does Circuit Spectrum understand these techniques, but they can mix the two on the same board and ensure matching over all traces on that board. All designs contain process monitoring features. Computer models and diagnostic equipment are used to fine-tune design and fabrication processes.

"I need clear documentation on my interface boards so that I don't spend hours generating a connection table and entering it into the tester."

Circuit Spectrum's boards are well documented on paper and on the board itself. A clear legend is silk screened onto the board for quick reference, making the board very easy to use. Also, Circuit Spectrum supplies a configuration table on disk in a suitable format for any computer. Therefore the net list can be loaded directly into the tester. It can be a time consuming task to enter all the information about the interface into the tester, and errors are easily made. The difficulty of tracking down these types of errors can cause large schedule delays to occur in a new product verification project. Eliminating manual entry of the connection table is another example of the complete solution offered by Circuit Spectrum.

Circuit Spectrum's sales have grown steadily since their inception, and they are continuing to grow their customer base. They continue to expand geographically, constantly adding customers from all over the United States and abroad. With a satisfied customer base and a thriving business, Circuit Spectrum will be here to provide interface boards for any test equipment you purchase.