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N5393F/G PCI Express® 4.0 (Gen4) Electrical Compliance Software for Infiniium Oscilloscope

Data Sheets

Verify and Debug your PCI Express® Designs More Easily

Keysight Technologies, Inc. PCI Express electrical performance validation and compliance software provides you with a fast and easy way to verify and debug your PCI Express 4.0, 3.0, 2.0, and 1.1/1.0a designs for both silicon validation (as per the PCIe® BASE specification) as well as for PCI Express 3.0, 2.0, and 1.1/1.0a add-in cards and motherboard systems (as per the PCIe CEM specification). In addition, this software tool will support testing using a U.2 (SFF-8639) at speeds up to 8 GT/s.

The PCI Express electrical test software allows you to automatically execute PCI Express electrical transmitter tests, and it displays the results in a flexible report format. In addition to the measurement data, the report provides a margin analysis that shows how closely your device passed or failed each test.

The PCI Express electrical test software utilizes the prescribed test methods and algorithms as required by the PCI Express Card Electromechanical (CEM) specifications for all current PCI Express Standards through PCIe 3.0.

This produces results that are not only consistent with the PCI-SIG® SigTest utility, but also provides you with a fast and easy means of executing complex two-port motherboard tests and single port add-in card test with total automation.

In addition to transmitter testing, the N5990A Automated Compliance and Device Characterization Test suit sets up the M8020A jBERT for performing PCI Express receiver tests such as the CEM paragraph 2.8 and 2.10 compliance tests as well as the paragraph 2.3 and 2.4 Link Equalization Tests.

Additional receiver tests include Jitter Tolerance, Sensitivity, Equalization Coefficient Matrix Scan, and Equalization Pre-Shoot De-Emphasis Scan.

The PCI Express electrical performance validation and compliance software performs a wide range of electrical tests as per the PCI Express CEM 3.0, 2.0, 1.1/1.0a electrical specifications for add-in cards and motherboard systems as documented in chapter 4 of the PCIe 3.0 base specification and chapter 4 of the PCIe 3.0 card electromechanical specification.

With the growing popularity of SSD drives, PCI Express has become the de-facto physical layer interface for solid state storage drives. One of the more common connectors used in SSDs today is the U.2 (also called the SFF-8639 connector). Using U.2 Test fixtures provided by the PCI-SIG, the Keysight PCI Express electrical test software supports the testing of U.2 based end points and root complexes at 2.5 G, 5 G, and 8 GT/s.

In addition to full swing (800 mV) testing, the software also supports testing for low-power, half-swing devices (400 mV) as per the PCI Express Architecture Mobile Graphics Low-Power Addendum to the PCI Express Base Specification Revision 1.0.

Features

The Keysight N5393F/G PCI Express 4.0 electrical transmitter (TX) test software represents the latest PCI Express TX test tool that supports PCI Express 4.0 with speeds of up 16 GT/s. Below is a list of a few of the key features of this software package.

  •  PCIe 4.0 BASE TX measurements including uncorrelated TJ, DJ, and PWJ, pseudo package loss and other parameters defined in the 0.7 version of the PCI Express BASE specification.
  •  BASE spec TX measurements are supported at 16 GT/s, 8 GT/s, 5 GT/s, and 2.5 GT/s.
  •  Legacy support for PCI Express 3.x, 2.x, and 1.1 compliance tests (BASE and CEM).
  •  PCI 4.0 reference clock measurements as defined in v0.9 of the PCIe 4.0 BASE spec.
  •  Support for U.2 (SFF-8639) PCIe 3.0 CEM measurements for endpoint and root complex devices (8 GT/s, 5 GT/s, and 2.5 GT/s).
  •  Automated DUT control for endpoint and root complex testing using a Keysight 81150A or 81160A Pulse Function Arbitrary Noise Generator.
  •  New Workshop Compliance mode for rapid PCI SIG-style compliance testing including Sigtest HTIML report files.
  •  Support for de-embedding of test fixtures, high speeds switches and cables 1 or the embedding of channel or package model losses.
  •  Support for Keysight and BitifEye high speed switch networks to automate testing of multi-lane DUTs 2.
  •  Test setup wizard for ease-of-use.
  •  Pass/fail margin analysis.
  •  Two-port (explicit clock and data) supported for motherboard signal quality testing 3.
  •  Support for both full-swing and low-power, half-swing devices.
  •  Supported on Keysight Z-Series, V-Series, Q-Series, X-Series, and 90000A real time oscilloscopes. Also supported for 2.5 G measurements only on the S-Series oscilloscope (See ordering information).

With the PCI Express N5393F/G electrical test software, you can use the same oscilloscope you use for everyday debugging to perform automated testing and margin analysis based on the PCI-SIG-specified tests.

PCI Express Compliance Testing

To pass signal quality testing at a PCI-SIG-sponsored compliance workshop, your product must successfully pass “Gold Suite” testing, based on the PCI-SIG SigTest application. The SigTest application tests your device against the minimum signal-quality performance requirements for PCIe.

If you are developing receivers and transmitters for add-in boards and system motherboards, the PCI Express electrical test software helps you execute the SigTest tests and additional oscilloscope based TX tests. See the list of tests in Table 3 on page 16 (for 1.1 test coverage).

While SigTest tests provide a good overview of PCI Express electrical signal quality, it addresses only a subset of the electrical compliance measurements specified in the PCI-SIG specification.

The SigTest application also provides minimal reporting capability with pass/fail indication and measurement values, and has limited debugging capabilities to decipher eye mask violations or excessive jitter.

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