SATA Protocol Triggering and Decode for Infiniium Series Oscilloscopes

SATA

SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) Serial bus is an interface used to connect ATA hard drives to a computer’s motherboard.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.As well, traditional scope triggers are not sufficient for specifying protocol-level conditions.

Extend your scope capability with the Keysight Technologies, Inc.SATA triggering and decode application.This application makes it easy to debug and test designs that include SATA buses using your Infiniium Series oscilloscope.

• Set up your scope to show SATA 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.

Easy to find

Turn decode on/off via the “Serial Decode” button on the front of 9000 Series scopes or in the “Setup” menu.View decode embedded on the waveform display or in the protocol viewer listing window.(See pages 4 to 5.)

30 second SATA setup

Configure your oscilloscope to display protocol decode in under 30 seconds.Use “Auto Setup” to automatically configure sample rate, memory depth, threshold and trigger levels, and clock recovery for SATA.

Support for both live and saved waveforms

Perform and view decode information on both live and saved waveforms.Decode up to any combination of 4 live or saved waveforms.

SATA Setup, Protocol Triggering, and Search Capabilities

Get access to a rich set of integrated protocol-level triggers.The application includes a suite of configurable protocol-level trigger conditions specific to SATA.When serial triggering is selected, the application uses software-based triggering.

With software-based protocol triggering, the oscilloscope takes signals acquired using scope channels and reconstructs protocol frames after each acquisition.It then inspects these protocol frames against specified protocol-level trigger conditions and triggers when the condition is met.

SATA trigger and search setup

Quickly access the software-based trigger via the trigger or search menus.Software-based triggering enables quick setup of data, remote, or error frames.

Specify the type

SATA primitives, SATA FIS Types and other frames can be acquired.

CAN Protocol Decode

Get access to a rich set of integrated protocol-level triggers.The application includes a suite of configurable protocol-level trigger conditions specific to SATA.When serial triggering is selected, the application uses software-based triggering.

With software-based protocol triggering, the oscilloscope takes signals acquired using scope channels and reconstructs protocol frames after each acquisition.It then inspects these protocol frames against specified protocol-level trigger conditions and triggers when the condition is met.

Compact protocol using the full screen listing

The protocol viewer window shows the index number, time stamp value identifier, packet type, and data values for each SATA packet.Data in the listing window can be saved to a .csv or .txt file for off-line.

SATA decode embedded in waveform area

Utilize the oscilloscope waveform area to display decode information.Minor ticks indicate clock transitions and major ticks show segments within each SATA packet.

Long time captures using segmented memory

In this example, CAN traffic was captured for near 35 seconds.Segmented memory uses time tags to track time between segment acquisitions.