Patent ID: 7511525

Claim:
A system comprising: a chassis configured to communicatively couple a plurality of physical application modules, each physical application module comprising a module bridge interface and a boundary-scan test functionality, the boundary-scan test functionality being enabled to perform boundary-scan test functions on the respective physical application module; and a test port via which an external test device is communicatively coupled to the system, wherein the test port is communicatively coupled to each of a plurality of chassis bridge interfaces in the chassis, wherein, when the module bridge interface of each of the physical application modules is communicatively coupled to a respective one of the plurality of chassis bridge interfaces in a daisy-chain configuration, then each physical application module is communicatively coupled to the test port and the boundary-scan test functionality is enabled for each physical application module, wherein the boundary-scan test functionalities in the plurality of physical application modules together enable distribution of a scan chain across the plurality of daisy chained physical application modules, and wherein data is communicated without the need of a switch from the external test device to the plurality of physical application modules.