VMETRO, analyzer, Vanguard Express, debugging, testing

VMETRO Announces PCI Express® Analysis for the AdvancedMC (AMC) form factor!

News Release from: Vmetro ASA
06/06/2006

VMETRO expands the highly successful Vanguard Express analyzer family with the introduction of the Vanguard Express PCI Express® Protocol and Link Analyzer for the AdvancedMC (AMC) form factor. Designed for debugging, testing and validating the PCI Express protocol, the Vanguard Express AdvancedMC allows testing of AMC.1 type 1, 2, 4 and 8 modules. The Vanguard Express family incorporates more than 20 years of VMETRO bus and protocol analyzer expertise and is VMETRO's first product offered for the AdvancedMC form factor.

The Vanguard Express AdvancedMC is a self contained unit that installs between the device under test and the host system, and allows testing with minimal intrusion to the system under test. The Vanguard Express AdvancedMC is operated via USB or Ethernet while using VMETRO’s BusView 5 Graphical User Interface software. A single workstation can control multiple Vanguard analyzers for monitoring different protocols and form factors including PCI Express, PCI-X/PCI, PMC, CompactPCI or VME.

At the heart of the Vanguard Express AMC is VMETRO’s unique Serial Analyzer Engine module (SAE). The SAE can be used on various VMETRO adapters providing PCI Express Analysis in multiple form factors. This makes the Vanguard Express the most flexible and cost-effective PCI Express Analyzer on the market!

“With the adoption of the AdvancedMC standard in the telecommunications industry, VMETRO cooperated with several key players in that market to develop the Vanguard Express AMC”, says Stein Erik Maurice, Group Marketing Manager at VMETRO asa. “The end result is a cost effective analyzer package that will significantly improve time to market for our customers”.

For ease of use and to increase productivity, the Vanguard Express Analyzers and
BusView 5 include protocol decoding as well as display trace data in multiple views. The PCI Express protocol is decoded throughout the user interface including setup screens, trace displays, statistics and all utilities. The user can arrange trace data in chronological order or grouped as link or split transactions for improved readability. Other unique trace views are available including data, packet details or lane views making data easy to read and interpret for all users, regardless of expertise and task.

Real Time Performance Analysis is also included with the Vanguard Express AMC Analyzer. The Vanguard Express statistics engine offers concurrent real-time measurements including Event Counting, Link Utilization, PLP Distribution, TLP Distribution, DLLP Distribution, Payload Length Distribution and Transfer Rate. In addition, post processing statistics are generated on any acquired trace data using the Trace Count feature which calculates performance information based on trace samples of interest.

Automatic error detection is performed by the Vanguard Express AdvancedMC’s onboard protocol checker. The protocol checker aids the user in tracking down link hardware errors and logical faults without the need to understand the nature of the problem. Each error includes online help to assist with debugging.