Agilent Debuts Oscilloscope-Based Application for Ethernet 64b/66b
October 26, 2011. Agilent Technologies Inc. has expanded its Infiniium oscilloscope application portfolio with Ethernet 64b/66b protocol decoding and triggering software. Agilent said that until now, the only available scope-based protocol solutions were for buses such as I2C, SPI, CAN, or 8b/10b-based decoding schemes, leaving 64b/66b developers manually decoding difficult designs. The Agilent N8815A Ethernet 10Gbase-KR decode application decodes in real time, enabling teams to develop higher-quality products more quickly.
Ethernet 64b/66b is used primarily in today’s data networking and transmissions technologies. FibreChannel, Ethernet, and Infiniband are just a few of the technologies that benefit from 64b/66b’s lower overhead. Agilent’s N8815A software is designed to benefit designers of the 10Gbase-KR and 40Gbase-KR technology defined as IEEE 802.3, which operates over backplane lanes. The new application takes advantage of Infiniium’s recently released multiple serial decoding and searching, allowing designers to look at four lanes at once.
In addition to decoding 64b/66b signals, N8815A software also properly identifies PRBS signals and their lengths. When designers want to ensure they are truly passing a PRBS pattern of a certain length to their signal, N8815A will allow them to ascertain the exact pattern length and pattern they are running. The application also allows for forward error correction.
The N8815A Ethernet 10Gbase-KR decode application is supported on Agilent’s Infiniium 90000 and 90000 X-Series oscilloscopes. The N8815A 10Gbase-KR triggering and decoding application is available now for $3,500.