Jitter Tolerance Compliance Test Suite For Serial Gigabit Receivers Introduced

Santa Clara, CA - Agilent Technologies Inc. announced the industry's first compliance test suite for jitter tolerance testing of serial gigabit receivers up to 12.5 Gb/s. The new software for the Agilent N4903A high-performance serial BERT (bit error ratio tester) makes it the most convenient and accurate tool for jitter tolerance compliance testing on the market.

The next generation of gigabit serial bus standards is approaching. Testing against a standard's receiver specification at compliance workshops and in R&D labs is mandatory for the market success of a new device.

R&D and test engineers will benefit from the N4903A's compliance test suite, with its extensive library of jitter tolerance compliance curves for PCI Express, Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (S-ATA), Fibre Channel, fully-buffered DIMM, Common Electrical Interface (CEI), 10 Gb Ethernet, and small form-factor pluggable (XFP). This eliminates the need to read all the standards and to program the test equipment accordingly. Customizable curves and margins can be added as needed. The compliance test suite automatically sweeps through the compliance measurement so that no equipment programming is necessary. A graphical display shows pass/fail results. The N4903A provides all required jitter sources that are calibrated and compliant with the latest serial bus standards, so the prerequisite for compliance testing is met.

"Compliance testing is mandatory for the market success of next-generation serial devices," said Siegfried Gross, vice president and general manager of Agilent's Digital Verification Solutions division. "With the introduction of the industry's first jitter tolerance compliance test solution, Agilent continues to demonstrate its leadership in providing innovative physical layer test solutions for the computer, storage and networking markets."

The Agilent N4903A high-performance serial BERT with the new jitter tolerance compliance suite provides the following benefits:

• Quick and accurate jitter tolerance compliance testing with an extensive library of standard and custom curves, adjustable margins, automated parameter sweep, and a graphical pass/fail result display with print/save function for documenting the test results easily.
  
• Built-in, calibrated, automated and compliant jitter-tolerance testing with sources for periodic jitter, random jitter, bounded uncorrelated jitter and both intersymbol and sinusoidal interference. This enables compliant jitter tolerance measurements.
  
• Immediate eye analysis -- provided on all N4903As -- with one-screen eye diagrams, eye contour lines, eye mask and pulse parameter measurements, eliminating the need to check for a valid signal with a scope before testing.
  
• Simplified analysis of complex devices by the new pattern capture capability on all N4903As.
  
• Upgradeability from the existing N4903A BERT platform, protecting customer investment.

SOURCE: Agilent Technologies Inc.