News and New Products

Protocol analyzer/exerciser handles ASI switched-fabric architecture

By Dan Strassberg -- EDN, 3/31/2005

Agilent Technologies claims that its E2980A is the first protocol-test system to handle the new PCI Express-based ASI (Advanced Switching Interconnect) switched-fabric architecture, which approximately 60 companies in the ASI SIG (special interest group, www.asi-sig.org) are promoting as perhaps the best way to build high-speed, high-performance, computing-intensive systems, such as the hardware at the heart of SANs (storage-area networks) (Picture).

At the core of ASI is the high-speed serial PCI Express bus. Unlike the host-centric PCI Express, however, ASI allows for peer-to-peer communication, which, in large systems, enables unrelated messages to flow simultaneously between multiple device pairs, dramatically speeding system operation. Moreover, by encapsulating their message packets within its own, ASI can subsume multiple high-speed protocols, such as Gigabit Ethernet and FibreChannel. What’s more, ASI not only adds a facility for simultaneously broadcasting messages to multiple devices but also adds 12- and 32-lane structures to PCI Express’s one-, two-, four-, eight-, and 16-lane configurations.

Because of this impressive list of capabilities, testing and verification of ASI-based system designs are big challenges. To meet those challenges, Agilent has called upon its modular N2X platform. The portable and benchtop N2X system units house two and four modules, respectively. The modules can function as protocol exercisers or analyzers, and typical systems contain both types. The basic functions of the analyzers, whose prices start at $58,000, are to acquire data, to search—both in real time and after the fact—for anomalous conditions, and to provide numerous metrics of system performance. Because so many ASI systems will contain multiple buses of different types, the analyzers incorporate extensive cross-domain triggering capabilities. The exercisers, whose prices start at $62,000, can fill in for system components that don’t yet exist in hardware form and can predictably and repeatedly inject into a system under test conditions that may cause misbehavior. Owners of the manufacturer’s E2960A PCI Express protocol-test systems can upgrade their systems to E2980As at a cost of $29,000 per module.

Agilent Technologies, 1-800-829-4444, www.agilent.com.