Parallel flashing in mass production

Question

Hello Nordic, We are preparing for mass production with nRF9160. We have a script to flash, register the thing on AWS and write credentials on the modem using nrfjprog. We use Segger J-Link for flashing as well as for debugging. My questen is that if there is a faster way to program or a solution to flash multiple chips at the same time or in parallel. I looked into solutions from Segger but I don't know if they work in our case. Writing the file in multiple chips is possible but the challenge is registering on AWS and writing the credentials on the chip afterwards, so different chips have different keys as well as different serial numbers. 
 Is there a good solution or experience in this regards? Best regards

Martin Sivertsen · Answer

Hello, 
 
 Comments from the team responsible for flashing our kits during production: 
 
 We don't have the issue of registering with AWS during production, but pass along any certificate created after the fact to nRF Cloud and Verizon. I don't think we can help out with that in particular. 
 
 What we use for parallel flashing is pynrfjprog, which can have multiple instances of the modem DFU running at the same time, we flash four boards at once (quantity determined by the size of the test jig for the boards, but you can most likely flash more at the same time).

Some details: we are threading the Highlevel.IPCDFUProbe 
 self.probe = HighLevel.IPCDFUProbe(api, int(jlink_id), HighLevel.CoProcessor.CP_MODEM, log=True)
self.probe.program(modem_zip) 
 
 Let me know if you need clarification or more information. 
 
 Best regards, 
 Martin S.