I2C and SPI Protocol Triggering and Decode

Easily debug and test designs that include I2C or SPI protocols using your Infiniium oscilloscopes

Lower-speed serial bus interfaces such as I2C (inter-integrated circuit) and SPI (serial peripheral interface) are widely used today in electronic designs for chip-to-chip communication. In many designs these serial buses tend to provide content-rich points for debug and test. However, since these protocols transfer bits serially, using a traditional oscilloscope has limitations. Manually converting captured 1’s and 0’s to protocol requires significant effort, can’t be done in real-time, and includes potential for human error. In addition, traditional scope triggers are not sufficient for specifying protocol-level conditions.

Extend your scope capability with I2C and SPI Triggering and Decode applica­tion. This application makes it easy to debug and test designs that include I2C or SPI protocols using your Infiniium oscilloscopes.

• Set up your scope to show I2C or SPI protocol decode in less than 30 seconds.
• Get access to a rich set of integrated protocol-level triggers.
• Save time and eliminate errors by viewing packets at the protocol level.
• Use time-correlated views to quickly troubleshoot serial protocol problems back to their timing or signal integrity root cause.

I2C and SPI protocol triggering and searching

Get access to a rich set of integrated protocol level triggers. The application includes a suite of configurable protocol-level trigger conditions specific to I2C and SPI. When serial triggering is selected, the application enables special real-time triggering hardware inside the scope.

Hardware-based triggering ensures that the scope never misses a trigger event when armed. This hardware takes signals acquired using either scope or digital channels and reconstructs protocol frames. It then inspects these protocol frames against specified protocol-level trigger conditions and triggers when the condition is met.

SPI protocol decode

The Keysight Technologies, Inc. SPI protocol viewer includes correlation be­tween the waveforms and the selected packet. The selected packet, highlighted blue row in the listing, is time-correlated with the blue line in the waveform display. Move the blue tracking marker in time through waveforms and the blue bar will automatically track in the packets window. Or, scroll through the packet viewer and highlight a specific packet. The time-correlation tracking marker will move to the associated point in the waveform.

I2C protocol decode

Quickly move between physical and I2C protocol layer information using the time-correlated tracing marker. Display protocol content using embedded decode in the waveform area, Or, see protocol events in a compact listing format using the industry’s first scope based multi-tab protocol viewer. For I2C minor tick marks indicate clock transitions. Major tick marks indicate sections of the serial packet such as address, acknowledge, and data.