PCI Express analyzer
Staff -- Test & Measurement World, 9/1/2006
The PETracer Gen2 Summit x16 protocol analyzer from LeCroy captures and analyzes PCI Express 2.0 serial data at speeds of 5 Gbps per lane. It can capture and analyze data from bidirectional lane widths of x1, x2, x4, x8, and x16, and it provides 8 Gbytes of trace memory. A new raw recording mode allows bytes to be recorded as they come across the link, allowing debugging of PHY layer problems.
Working with the manufacturer’s CATC Trace analysis software, the PETracer decodes bus data and presents the PCI Express protocol layers. The software provides real-time statistics, protocol traffic summaries, detailed error reports, and scripting, and it creates user-defined test reports. You can initiate a data capture triggering on PCI Express Events such as Link Conditions, transaction layer packet (TLP) headers, data-link layer packet (DLLP) messages, and data payload. Ethernet and USB ports provide connection from the analyzer to a host PC.
The analyzer supports spread-spectrum clocked (SSC) traffic, and “lane swizzling” which lets a board developer lay out a mid-bus probe pad with lanes in non-standard order, thus simplifying PCB design.
LeCroy, www.lecroy.com.
