Agilent Technologies introduced the M8000 Series BER test solution, a highly integrated and scalable bit error ratio test solution for physical-layer characterisation, validation and compliance testing for receivers used in multi-gigabit digital designs.
With support for a wide range of data rates and standards, the new portfolio provides accurate and reliable results that accelerate insight into the performance margins of high-speed digital devices for computer, consumer, server, mobile computing and data centre products.
When R&D and validation teams characterise next-generation designs, they face several test challenges. First, the faster data rates of the emerging next-generation digital computer buses, such as PCI Express 4 (with a bit rate of 16 GTps) and USB 3.1 (with a bit rate of 10 Gbps), present new signal integrity test challenges. New 128/130-bit and 128/132-bit coding formats complicate error detection and loopback pattern creation.
In addition, widespread adoption of mobile computing devices means more and more R&D and test engineers need to test different implementations of MIPI ports, with new data formats, termination models, multiple lanes and built-in error counting.
Lastly, with the enormous surge in data centre traffic, servers and storage designs must support much higher bandwidths on their backplane and networking ports. Data rates of 25 Gbps and more on multiple lanes over PC boards, cable or optical interconnects are required by most of the latest industry standards, such as 100GbE, CEI and Fibre Channel. Testing such 25 Gbps receiver ports requires new test capabilities to characterise device tolerance for interference, channel losses and crosstalk.
The first model in the new M8000 Series is the J-BERT M8020A high-performance BERT. It enables fast and accurate receiver characterisation of single- and multi-lane devices operating at data rates up to 16 Gbps and 32 Gbps. The instrument offers built-in jitter injection, 8-tap de-emphasis, interference sources, reference clock multiplication, clock recovery and equalisation.
Accurate and repeatable measurements are ensured by automating in situ calibration of signal conditions, while the effort required to bring devices into loopback test mode is reduced because the M8020A behaves like a link partner for the device under test and supports interactive link training for PCIe devices.
The BERT is scalable and expandable to meet future test needs. It supports one to four BERT channels and offers data rates of up to 8,5 Gbps and 16 Gbps with an extension to 32 Gb/s. It is based on AXIe, which is the industry standard for high-performance modular test equipment. It is controlled from a user interface via USB and all options are upgradeable.
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