Agilent Technologies Inc. (www.agilent.com) has unveiled a fully integrated viewing application for PCI Express 3.0 that combines analog waveform annotation and packet viewing with advanced symbol and packet searching capabilities in one oscilloscope-based tool.
The Agilent N8816A PCI Express 3.0 protocol viewer software allows engineers to easily identify protocol errors while analyzing analog waveform characteristics. This enables engineers developing PCI Express 3.0-based products deal with possible issues early in the design cycle.
The software offers time-correlated views of transaction and physical layer errors. Using an oscilloscope, the software displays the serial packet data that has been synchronized with the analog view of the PCI Express 3.0 waveform. The decoded waveform is then displayed on the analog waveform in a list format with associated index and time information. The combination of simultaneous analog and logical views of PCI Express 3.0 data enables engineers to easily isolate intermittent protocol errors caused by signal-integrity-related issues, saving precious time than doing similar task with a protocol-only tool.
“We are pleased that companies such as Agilent are working to deploy tools that offer visibility into the details of PCI Express 3.0 link training and bi-directional packet viewing,” said Al Yanes, President and Chairman of PCI-SIG.
“Tools such as these can help PCI-SIG members test their PCI Express 3.0 products early in the design cycle, helping to achieve product quality and interoperability.”
Meanwhile, the Agilent N8816A PCI Express 3.0 protocol viewer software for the Infiniium 90000 Series of oscilloscopes offers validation and design engineers with packet-level decode for PCI Express symbols. It also provides detailed packet decoding as well as visibility of low-level packet content.
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