Agilent Technologies has made news on two fronts with respect to the MIPI Alliance's M-PHY specification. First, the company announced an automated physical-layer receiver and transmitter test capability, and second, it introduced the U4431A MIPI M-PHY protocol analyzer.
The M-PHY specification is helping to meet growing bandwidth requirements for mobile devices as they encroach on PC functionality and interface with multiple high-resolution cameras, high-speed peripherals, advanced graphics adapters, and massive memory buffers. M-PHY supports four-lane, 6-Gb/s options.
The automated physical-layer test capability makes use of the U7249B-1FP MIPI M-PHY compliance test software running on Agilent Infiniium 90000 Series oscilloscopes. The software provides physical-layer transmitter compliance measurements based on the MIPI M-PHY conformance test suite. Automation is provided by Agilent's U7249B-7FP switch matrix software, which supports test for the individual lanes on a multilane bus. Supported switch-matrix hardware models include Agilent’s U3020AS26 and the BIT-2100 Series models from Agilent solution partner BitifEye. Click here for more. Last month, Agilent had announced support for other multilane buses, including DisplayPort, HDMI, PCI-Express, and MIPI D-PHY. Click here for more.
Agilent said its U4431A MIPI M-PHY protocol analyzer, an AXIe blade, gives engineers in R&D and manufacturing deep insight into MIPI M-PHY-based designs. The U4431A offers up to 16 GB of analysis memory on each lane, allowing designers to capture tens of seconds of system traffic, even at these high speeds.
In addition, the U4431A offers “Raw Mode,” a feature that lets designers see the time-correlated 8b/10b data that underlies each protocol. These states can be displayed as a waveform or listing, providing insight into how a packet is formed at the physical layer.
“The M-PHY physical layer is critical to the implementation of next-generation mobile computing products, including smartphones, tablets, and laptops,” said Joel Huloux, chairman of the MIPI Alliance, in a press release. “Testing and validating the implementation of MIPI Alliance’s specification is essential for our members to deliver quality products. We are pleased to see Agilent delivering new tools for analyzing the UniPro [Unified Protocol] interface.”
“UFS expands the reach of leading-edge memory technology into mobile platforms,” added Mian Quddus, chairman of the Universal Flash Storage Association. “Tools that simplify the validation of these platforms ensure that these designs will reach customers sooner and with greater reliability.” Click here for more.