Tektronix, Inc. (www.tek.com) has announced a new addition to the most comprehensive solution for PCI Express 3.0. It offers physical layer transmitter verification, debug, compliance testing and characterization using Tektronix’s DPO/DSA/MSO70000 Series oscilloscopes. With this launch, the company now delivers the most complete and broadest set of protocol layer and physical measurement capabilities for PCI Express.

The PCIe 3.0 architecture delivers a high-performance, low-cost I/O technology, including a new data rate of 8GT/s and 128b/130b encoding scheme, doubling the interconnect bandwidth over PCIe 2.0. PCIe 3.0 is based on the same board material (FR4) and connectors and represents a harder test challenge with new jitter measurements and smaller margins required to increase signal loss in the channel.

“As the release of the PCIe 3.0 specification nears completion, the hard work of designing, testing and manufacturing silicon and other components that implement the specification is now in full swing,” said Jim Pappas, Director of Technology Initiatives of Intel’s Data Center Group. “Due to the complexities of the physical layer within the PCIe 3.0 specification, electrical testing will play a major role to ensure the success and performance of motherboards, adaptor cards and other server-platform components. We value the success of the PCIe 3.0 architecture within the Enterprise market and recognize the contribution Tektronix makes by delivering electrical test solutions which enable the industry.”

“Over the last few years, we’ve been preparing for the release of the Gen 3 serial data standards by increasing the performance and signal fidelity of our oscilloscopes and by working closely with the standards organizations to define test requirements,” said Brian Reich, general manager of Performance Oscilloscopes at Tektronix. “Now that PCIe 3.0 has arrived, we are fully prepared with an industry leading combination of precision oscilloscopes and the broadest range of measurement coverage for this exciting new specification.”