New 16-Lane Kodiak™ 64GT/s Test Platform Also Adds Protocol Emulation Capability
Longmont, CO, USA — November 14, 2023 — SerialTek, a leading provider of protocol test solutions for Compute Express Link™, PCI Express® and NVM Express®, today introduced an advancement in the CXL™ / PCIe® test and analysis market with the release of the Kodiak CXL 3.1 / PCIe 6.0 x16 Protocol Test System. The system features the innovative multi-platform, web-based BusXpert analysis software, up to 8TB of embedded storage, the industry’s deepest capture buffer at 288GB, accelerated post-processing architecture, and a new protocol tester capability with compliance suites and traffic emulation. The solution is completed with the industry’s first calibration-free PCIe x16 add-in-card (AIC) and x16 OCP 3.0 NIC/EDSFF interposers with high signal integrity SI-Fi™ technology. The system provides comprehensive lane and sideband probing on a multitude of physical interfaces with high accuracy, allowing for high-fidelity probing of PCIe lanes/signals and blazingly fast trace analysis.
Importantly, the new interposer features the industry’s first integrated power analysis functionality, powered by a compact module from Quarch Technology Ltd, a leading provider of automated test solutions for the data storage, networking, and telecom industries. The power analysis module provides very high-accuracy measurements of voltage, current, and power, eliminating the need for bulky current probes/oscilloscopes or DC power analyzers.
Accelerated Protocol Analysis with Embedded Compute and Storage
The core of the Kodiak CXL 3.1 / PCIe 6.0 x16 Protocol Test System is a powerful embedded hardware architecture that delivers substantial and unmatched capabilities for analyzer trace capture, filtering, search, and processing acceleration to handle the industry’s deepest 288 GB traces in a fraction of the time compared to legacy approaches. The software is extremely responsive, easy to use, and modern, which makes viewing massive amounts of data fast, flexible, and powerful.
Kodiak supports multiple concurrent users via secure remote connections to its modern web UI from any web browser without any software installation. It can save trace files directly to internal storage, mapped storage, attached storage, or downloads via high-speed network connections. Analyzer traces typically stay within the Kodiak system, saved from the trace buffers to internal storage, processed by embedded computer, and rendered to users via any multi-platform web browser. Engineers can easily and efficiently collaborate on deep analyzer traces, locally or remotely, directly from the analyzer without ever moving large traces around.
“Since the introduction of SerialTek’s PCIe 5.0 Kodiak, SerialTek has continued adding disruptive, paradigm-shifting features. These include completely new hardware platforms with latest-generation test & measurement technologies and a flexible web-based software platform,” said Paul Mutschler, CEO of SerialTek. “The user interface is modern, easy to use, and flexible. In addition to being easy to set up and saving time, the calibration-free design supports PCIe dynamic link-training to equalize ‘real-world’ channels between the PCIe host and device. This makes it more accurate and especially important when debugging LTSSM or power management problems.”
Automatable Emulation and Compliance Testing
This latest iteration of the Kodiak platform includes a protocol tester that consists of a compliance suite and an emulation capability. The tester is available from the same Kodiak web UI and can be automated with a flexible REST API for easy integration into CI/CD systems. The protocol tester supports the PCI SIG’s PCI Express Link and Transaction Layers Compliance Test Suite, as well as CXL Link and Transaction Layers Compliance Testing. It also features a manual mode that allows users to emulate a host or device, easily modify configuration space, change LTSSM states, force sideband signals, and more. These capabilities enable developers to validate spec-compliant behaviors, create corner cases, force erroneous behaviors, test performance, and confirm the robustness of their devices or systems from early development through validation and compliance.
Passive PCIe SI-Fi Interposers Improve Accuracy, and User Setup
SerialTek’s PCIe x16 6.0 AIC and OCP 3.0 NIC/EDSFF interposers are highly accurate electrically, simple to use, and improve testing in critical areas, including link training (LTSSM), power management (PM), software hot plug, reset, and other link states where the physical lane characteristics may change. Tuning (calibration) is not necessary because the host and device signals pass through the interposer, allowing for real-world PCIe link training. Competing PCIe analyzers and interposers require hours-long tuning procedures, or calibration, which can lead to reliability issues as modern PCIe link training sequences are dynamic and short. With SI-Fi technology and Kodiak’s adaptive EQ capabilities, users save hours in setup time. If link characteristics change (e.g., Hot Plug or NSSR), Kodiak can follow those changes automatically, ultimately saving user’s time.
Availability, Product Photos, and Information
SerialTek is accepting orders for the Kodiak CXL 3.1 / PCIe 6.0 x16 Protocol Test System now with availability in Q1, 2024. SerialTek is also offering PCIe5.0 to PCIe6.0 analyzer trade-in deals, and free interim PCIe5.0 analyzer loaners with the early purchase of PCIe6.0 systems. For more information, including software downloads, please contact sales@serialtek.com or visit www.serialtek.com.