Best in Test Finalists 2010: Computer bus analyzers

-- Test & Measurement World, 12/22/2009 12:00:00 PM

Return to the entire list of Best in Test finalists for 2010.

--Data Center 3.5 Software, Total Phase
--Explorer 280 USB 3.0 Protocol Analyzer/Generator Duo, Ellisys
--PCIe Jammer Error-Injection Tool, Agilent Technologies
--Sierra M6-2 Protocol Test System, LeCroy
--Xgig Protocol Analysis and Test Platform for SAS and SATA, JDSU

 

Data Center 3.5 Software
Total Phase
www.totalphase.com

The Data Center 3.5 protocol-analysis software from Total Phase offers true real-time performance and cross-platform support for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. This user-friendly bus-monitoring software captures and displays USB, I2C, and SPI data in real-time with the company's Beagle line of hardware protocol analyzers. A number of features were released in 2009, including: real-time USB class-level decoding, intuitive hierarchical data-packet grouping, expanded real-time data filtering, a UNIX-style command line interface, and instant multilingual support.

With the software's real-time display, developers get immediate feedback when interacting with devices under test. This visibility into the inner workings of USB and other serial bus protocols helps developers quickly identify and resolve problems. Total Phase says that the low cost of the Data Center software and hardware bus monitor make protocol analysis accessible to more engineers.

Base price: Beagle protocol analyzers—$300; the software is free.

  

Explorer 280 USB 3.0 Protocol Analyzer/Generator Duo
Ellisys
www.ellisys.com

The Ellisys Explorer 280 Duo is a USB 3.0 protocol analyzer and generator system that supports hardware and software development teams in bringing USB 3.0 to market. This system provides new approaches to protocol analysis, including a data-bus event-timing view, stream-to-screen captures, a configurable spreadsheet-like display of bus events that lets users easily configure the analyzer to specific tasks, and an automated compliance test suite that helps ensure designs meet specification requirements and interoperate with other products.

The Ellisys team elected to build a single piece of hardware that would act as both a passive bus-analysis tool and as an active device and host emulator (generator), anticipating that early developers would need generation capabilities early in development, but would need primarily analysis-only features later in the development cycle. Ellisys says that the Duo is cost-effectively two analyzers, two generators, or a single analyzer-generator system.

Price: $27,500.

 

PCIe Jammer Error-Injection Tool
Agilent Technologies
www.agilent.com

The PCIe Jammer allows engineers to improve error handling and avoid costly late product changes or product recalls, according to Agilent. The Jammer is transparent to both devices and plugs into a real system environment; that is, the user performs tests in a real world environment. Because of its transparency, the Jammer is fast and easy to set up: There are no scripts to write, error injections are driven through a graphical sequencer, and almost any conceivable error recovery test case can be programmed.

PCIe specification correctable and uncorrectable errors are also included. Jammer enables the testing of the hardware, operating system, drivers, software, and their interactions together to ensure robust performance. Further, the Jammer allows a single setup to validate the product in all operating systems.

Base price: $27,000.

 

Sierra M6-2 Protocol Test System
LeCroy Corporation
www.lecroy.com

The Sierra M6-2 is a compact, portable, and multifunctional SAS/SATA protocol-test platform that supports data rates up to 6Gbps. No larger than a notebook PC, the Sierra M6-2 supports protocol analysis; host/device emulation; compliance, interoperability and performance test; and error injection—all in a single system.

The system is designed for both lab and field use by engineers developing and supporting 6G SAS/SATA devices. These engineers need a platform that is powerful and flexible for development, yet inexpensive and portable for production and field support. The Sierra M6-2 is designed for use during the full life cycle of the product, including development, production, deployment, and field support. The simple-to-use system allows companies to develop sophisticated tests specific to their products and to maintain standardized test libraries on a common platform for use by all departments, including field service.

Base price: $18,950.

 

Xgig Protocol Analysis and Test Platform for SAS and SATA
JDSU
www.jdsu.com/snt

The Xgig Analysis and Test Platform for SAS/SATA offers all major testing capabilities required to comprehensively test network equipment for 6-Gbps SAS/SATA: analysis, traffic generation, target emulation, compliance testing, and error injection and jamming. Its wide array of features, such as cross triggering (internal and external) and expert analysis, make it a complete platform for solving the complex challenges associated with high-speed serial buses.

The instrument captures multiple traces with its 16-Gbyte-per-blade trace-memory buffers and analyzes live traffic of nearly 200 different storage protocols. In addition, it provides protocol-aware analysis at 1.5, 3.0, and 6 Gbps for both SAS and SATA, supports SAS-2 primitives and zoning commands, and analyzes SAS-2 multiplexed traces. It speeds identification of impairments relating to out-of-band signaling and nonintrusively monitors at the full line rate for both SAS and SATA.

Price: not provided.