Serial BERT fully accommodates forward-clocked designs.

Press Release Summary:



J-BERT N4903B lets users characterize and test compliance of next-generation multi-gigabit serial bus devices such as PCIe 2.0, USB 3, QPI, Hypertransport 3, and FB-DIMM 2. It characterizes jitter tolerance and margins of forward-clocked devices by providing half-rate clocks with variable duty-cycle distortion to emulate effects of non-ideal clocking. Users can also inject jitter on forwarded half-rate clock and on data signals with adjustable phase relations.



Original Press Release:



Agilent Technologies Offers Only Complete Jitter Tolerance Test for Next Generation of Forwarded-, Embedded-Clock Designs



J-BERT Provides Complete Jitter Tolerance Characterization, Compliance Testing for PCI Express® 2.0, USB 3.0, QuickPath Interconnect, Hypertransport 3 and FB-DIMM 2 Devices

SANTA CLARA, Calif., DesignCon 2009, Booth 305, Feb. 2, 2009 -- Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that its new J-BERT N4903B high-performance serial BERT offers the only complete jitter tolerance testing for high-speed digital interfaces operating up to 12.5 Gb/s. Design and test engineers can now accurately characterize and test compliance of next generation multi-gigabit serial bus devices, such as PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0, USB 3, QuickPath Interconnect (QPI), Hypertransport 3 and fully-buffered DIMM 2 (FB-DIMM 2), receiving the most integrated and accurate characterization to enable more robust designs.

Forward clocking architectures, such as QPI, Hypertransport, and FB-DIMM 2, operate with forwarded clocks running at half the data rate. This causes additional test challenges to the design teams when characterizing these receivers under real-world stress conditions. Agilent's J-BERT N4903B characterizes the jitter tolerance and margins of such receivers by providing half-rate clocks with variable duty-cycle distortion to emulate effects of non-ideal clocking. It allows users to inject jitter on the forwarded half-rate clock and on data signals with adjustable phase relations. This allows the most accurate characterization enabling more robust designs.

Higher data rates of next-generation high-speed embedded clocked computer and video buses, such as PCI Express 2.0, USB 3, DisplayPort and SATA 6G, require sophisticated jitter injection and signaling during the test-and-validation phase. The new Agilent N4903B addresses these needs by offering even more calibrated and built-in jitter injection and signaling capabilities.

"We are very proud to offer the industries' leading jitter tolerance test solution," said Jargen Beck, general manager of Agilent's Digital Photonic Test product line. "By addressing the latest test requirements from embedded and forward clock architectures to our J-BERT platform, we continuously demonstrate our commitment to enable R&D and validation teams to release the next generation of robust high-speed digital interfaces for the computer, video and communication industries."

Benefits of the Agilent J-BERT N4903B High-Performance Serial BERT include:

o ability to emulate worst-case conditions by generating half-rate clocks with variable duty cycle and jitter for forward-clocked devices;

o most integrated and calibrated jitter sources, with selectable random jitter with PCIe 2.0-compliant spectral distribution, single- and two-tone periodic jitter, spread spectrum clock (SSC) and residual SSC, BUJ, built-in ISI, and sinusoidal interference;

o compliant jitter injection for testing the latest serial bus receivers , such as PCIe 2.0, USB 3.0, SATA and DisplayPort;

o accurate TJ measurements with built-in CDR with tunable loop bandwidth;

o easier adoption to device under test by emulating electrical idle conditions and offering variable output voltage levels on supplementary outputs (trigger output and aux data output);

o faster execution of long test sequences with 60 block pattern sequencer; and

o upgrade path from Agilent's N4903A to N4903B, protecting investments.

Additional information about Agilent's J-BERT N4903B is available at www.agilent.com/find/jbert.

A video about the J-BERT N4903B is available at www.agilent.com/find/jbert_video.

U.S. Pricing and Availability

The Agilent J-BERT N4903B will be available for ordering March 2009. Pricing for the Agilent J-BERT N4903B high-performance serial BERT with built-in tunable CDR starts at $139,000 for the 7 Gb/s version, and $179,000 for the 12.5Gb/s version. Agilent's J-BERT N4903B is the replacement product for the N4903A.

About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is the world's premier measurement company and a technology leader in communications, electronics, life sciences and chemical analysis. The company's 19,000 employees serve customers in more than 110 countries. Agilent had net revenues of $5.8 billion in fiscal 2008. Information about Agilent is available on the Web at www.agilent.com.

PCI-SIG, PCI Express and PCIe are trademarks or registered trademarks of PCI-SIG.

Information in this news release applies specifically to products available in the United States. Product availability and specifications may vary in other markets.

Agilent Technologies, Electronic Measurements Group, 5301 Stevens Creek Blvd., MS 54LAK, Santa Clara, CA 95052.

Further technology, corporate citizenship and executive news is available on the Agilent news site at www.agilent.com/go/news.

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