Agilent Technologies Delivers Industry’s First PCI Express(r) Jammer with Inline Error Injection Capabilities

Jammer Provides Unprecedented Ability to Perform Disruptive Test of PCI Express Devices in Live Systems Regardless of Operating System and Application Type

SANTA CLARA.- Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today introduced an inline error injection tool (Jammer) for PCI Express(r) (PCIe) protocol testing. This breakthrough concept for PCIe testing is the only tool of this type in the industry and allows developers to shorten test cycles and improve time to market of their device.

PCI Express has become the interconnect of choice for all high-performance applications, including servers, storage devices, peripherals, graphics and imaging. Designers of PCIe systems and devices are faced with the demand for more reliable systems that can interoperate with the exploding number of PCIe devices.

Agilent designed the N5323A PCIe Jammer to address these challenges. The Jammer sits transparently between two devices and can modify real PCIe data transfers real-time, to create disruptive test scenarios that increase test coverage. Almost any conceivable error recovery test case can be programmed, including PCIe correctable and uncorrectable errors. This allows developers and test engineers to improve error handling and avoid costly late product changes or product recalls. Because of its transparency, the Jammer is fast and easy to set up. No scripts to write; error injections are driven through a graphical sequencer.

“LSI has a proven history of delivering the highest quality silicon to our customers by implementing testing at every level,” said David Steele, director of Systems Engineering, Storage Components Group, LSI Corporation. “We were looking for a way of doing this even more efficiently and Agilent’s PCIe Jammer helped us do exactly that. The tool is simple to configure, and the pre-canned test cases and ability to inject errors in a real system environment have increased test coverage, ensuring that our silicon is even more robust.”

“The PCI Express Jammer from Agilent is another example of the enabling role Agilent plays in the PCI Express industry,” said Rick Eads, senior program manager PCI Express and Agilent representative to PCI-SIG Board. “As the usage of PCI Express technology expands, it is becoming more feature rich and at the same time more complex to test. Through its unique design, the PCI Express Jammer simplifies testing. Also, with its emphasis on negative scenario testing, the Jammer helps to ensure more reliability in PCI Express devices.”

To seamlessly move from test to debug, the Agilent N5323A PCIe Jammer also works in conjunction with the PCIe E2960B series protocol analyzer from Agilent. The Jammer generates errors and can trigger the analyzer to capture and display the responses. This setup allows test engineers to view traffic both before and after the error injection to ensure the appropriate recovery mechanism was taken.