High-speed serial protocol test platform

The TPI4000 Protocol Analyzer Series by Tektronix is designed to provide multiple test functions for just one instrument for serial protocol tests.

January 12, 2012

Tektronix Inc. introduced a new comprehensive protocol test platform that allows engineers to analyze, stimulate, stress and characterize high-speed serial links — with support for speeds up to 10 Gb/s. With the TPI4000 Protocol Analyzer Series, customers can use one instrument to perform multiple test functions and to look at a variety of protocols such as Ethernet, Fibre Channel, Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI), and Serial Front Panel Data Port (FPDP).

Engineers working with these high-speed serial protocols need to perform a number of tests, including interoperability and compatibility testing, performance optimization and stress testing. The TPI4000 Series is designed to provide one instrument that can be configured to perform each of these tasks.

The TPI4000 Series consists of two models. The TPI4202 is a portable unit with a built-in monitor and keyboard and supports up to 8 ports. The TPI4208 is a 4U rack-mount unit that supports up to 32 ports. Each model is highly configurable with options to support different data rates, to support different protocols, and to support different applications.

Key product features include:

One instrument – multiple functions: In a single hardware platform, the TPI4000 can be configured by the user to be any combination of protocol analyzer, traffic generator, system stress tester, or BER (bit error rate) tester. This eliminates the need to buy separate test tools for each of these functions.

One instrument – multiple protocols: The TPI4000 can support any combination of protocols simultaneously and can be reconfigured by the user to support different protocols. Multiple protocol support allows users to troubleshoot system-level problems while the ability to reconfigure the TPI4000 to support different protocols reduces total test cost.

Database-driven protocol analysis: The TPI4000 is the only protocol analyzer on the market built with a user-editable database that allows customers to define custom protocols using the optional Protocol Editor tool. This is ideal for applications such as defense electronics that add proprietary and confidential extensions to existing protocols.

High-speed serial protocols supported by the TPI4000 Series include Fibre Channel (FICON, AS1760, ASM, FC-AE-1553, others), Ethernet (iSCSI, FCoE, TCP/IP, IPv6, iFCP, AFDX, ARINC664, TTE, others), Serial Front Panel Data Port (Serial FPDP), Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), Serial ATA (SATA), Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) and Serial RapidIO (SRIO).

Textronix, Inc.

www.tektronix.com

– Edited by Chris Vavra, Control Engineering, www.controleng.com