Agilent intros series of BER test solutions for faster design verification

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Agilent Technologies Inc. introduced the new M8000 Series BER test solution, a highly integrated and scalable bit error ratio test solution for physical-layer characterization, validation and compliance testing for receivers used in multigigabit digital designs.

With support for a wide range of data rates and standards, the new M8000 Series BER test solution provides accurate and reliable results that accelerate insight into the performance margins of high-speed digital devices for computer, consumer, server, mobile computing and data-center products.

When R&D and validation teams characterize next-generation designs, they face several test challenges. First, the faster data rates of the emerging next-generation digital computer buses, such as PCI Express 4 (with a bit rate of 16 GT/s) and USB 3.1 (with a bit rate of 10 Gb/s), present new signal integrity test challenges. New 128/130-bit and 128/132-bit coding formats complicate error detection and loopback pattern creation.

In addition, widespread adoption of mobile computing devices means more and more R&D and test engineers need to test different implementations of MIPI ports, with new data formats, termination models, multiple lanes and built-in error counting.

Lastly, with the enormous surge in data-center traffic, servers and storage designs must support much higher bandwidths on their backplane and networking ports. Data rates of 25 Gb/s and more on multiple lanes over PC boards, cable or optical interconnects are required by most of the latest industry standards, such as 100GbE, CEI and Fibre Channel. Testing such 25-Gb/s receiver ports requires new test capabilities to characterize device tolerance for interference, channel losses and crosstalk.