SerialTek Delivers Portable Analyzer Supporting PCIe 3.0

SerialTek LLC. expands its line of analysis solutions for PCIe with the availability of portable analyzer for PCIe 3.0 solutions.

For field environments, the BusXpert Micro analyzer for PCIe 3.0 technology provides field personnel and lab engineers with a portable and solution to help quickly identify and resolve interoperability and component issues with PCIe systems.

Like its larger predecessor, the Micro supports data rates of 2.5GT/s, 5GT/s and 8GT/s and provides capture, analysis and insight of PCIe traffic at all layers. The same ease of use, multiple display views, powerful triggering and attractive price points that have long been hallmarks of SerialTek storage protocol products is available.

Micro analyzer supporting PCIe 3.0 provides key technical features and benefits:

• Compact and portable; it weighs less than 4.5 lbs making it suited for fieldbased

• Work and applications. The dimensions of the unit are 7x10x2″ or 17.8×25.4x5cm

• Purpose-built analysis appliance; there is no need to hassle with swapping blades or modules

• Built in eye diagram display allow digital signals to be observed in a graphic form

• Support for Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe), Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI), SCSI over PCIe (SOP) and SATA Express

• Deep capture buffers: 72GB of DDR3 memory; 36GB upstream and 36Gs downstream

• Triggering with up to 7 separate simultaneous sequencers

“We are pleased that companies like SerialTek are actively promoting the adoption of PCIe technology,” said Al Yanes, chairman and president, PCI-SIG. “Its protocol tools and analysis solutions broaden the reach of possible use cases for PCIe architecture.“

“Foxconn is the world’s largest electronics contractor manufacturer and is engaged with original design manufacturing,” says Xiaolin Gan, vice manager, Foxconn. “Our engineers are under great pressure to identify, and resolve physical and protocol issues that often arise during the design, test and quality assurance phases of our product development lifecycle. SerialTek is committed to providing the SAS/SATA and PCIe tools necessary to support our mission of providing the highest level of product quality and satisfaction for our customers and ensuring we maintain our market leadership position.“

The Micro provides a number of ways to display the captured traffic, from viewing an entire command transaction and its associated frames in Transaction view, to viewing a frame as it looks in the PCIe specifications in Details view, to viewing the handshaking in Protocol view. Manipulating the trace via searching, hide/show, bookmarking, and by decode is available with few clicks. Innovations like multithreaded processing, fast trace display and trace indexing have long been a hallmark of SerialTek analyzer software and are available on the Micro.

“As a leader in PCIe test and validation tools, OakGate is pleased to see SerialTek introduce a small form factor PCIe analyzer,” stated Aaron Masters, director engineering, OakGate Technology. “We have a high regard for the advanced functionality built into SerialTek’s analyzers. Developers and users of PCIe products will derive significant incremental benefits from the compact footprint, enhanced portability and familiar user interface offered by this product. We look forward to working with SerialTek and other industry partners to deliver innovative test solutions for the PCIe storage industry,” added Masters.

Complementing the Micro is a waveform ‘eye’ display feature. Typically found on oscilloscopes, eye diagrams allow PCIe digital signals to be observed in a graphic form. Such diagrams are used as a visual aid in obtaining the optimal signal integrity by presenting visually the effects of varying calibration settings on the received serial data.

“SerialTek is excited to meet the engineering community’s need for a portable, small footprint Gen3 PCIe protocol analyzer with the introduction of the BusXpert Micro PCIe,” says Jud Bond, senior product manager, SerialTek. “The innovative hardware design of the Micro PCIe, coupled with the industry-best BusXpert software makes for a powerful combination that enables engineers to analyze and solve issues both in the lab and in the field.“

SerialTek’s Micro analyzer for PCIe 3.0 is available for quote with first customer shipments beginning in early November.

SerialTek offers no cost, no obligation evaluation systems to qualified customers.