05 | Keysight | N5393D PCI Express® 3.0 (Gen3) Software for Infiniium Oscilloscopes - Data Sheet
Benefits
PCI Express electrical test software benefits
The PCI Express electrical test software saves you time by setting the stage for automatic
execution of PCI Express electrical tests, including JBERT jitter stress calibration (optional).
Part of the difficulty of performing electrical tests for PCI Express is hooking up the
oscilloscope, loading the proper setup files, and then analyzing the measured results by
comparing them to limits published in the specification. The PCI Express electrical test
software does much of this work for you. In addition, if you discover a problem with your device,
robust debug tools are available to aid in root-cause analysis. These debug tools are provided
by the Keysight E2688A high-speed serial data analysis software, which you must install on
your oscilloscope to use the PCI Express electrical test software.
The software also now has an integrated interface for controlling the InfiniiSim Waveform
Transformation Toolset for de-embedding of test fixtures. Introduced with PCIe 2.0, de-
embedding of test fixtures utilizes S-parameters as input to create a de-embed model that
helps to restore high frequency signal content that is often lost or significantly attenuated
by test fixtures and cables. This can help to recover significant jitter margin normally lost to
fixtures used in a test setup.
The software can be purchased with an optional test suite for performing the calibration of your
Keysight JBERT (B) bit error ratio tester for stressed eye receiver testing for PCIe 3.0 silicon.
This helps ensure consistent run-to-run setup of the instrumentation, saving you time and
providing consistent and accurate receive test results.
The PCI Express electrical test software offers many more electrical tests than the SigTest
application. Unlike the SigTest application, the PCI Express electrical test software
automatically configures the oscilloscope for each test, and it provides an informative results
report that includes margin analysis indicating how close your product is to passing or failing
a particular test assertion. Table 1 shows a side-by-side comparison of the capabilities of
the SigTest application and the Keysight PCI Express electrical test software. A list of the
measurements made by the PCI Express electrical test software can be found in Table 3, (Table
3 contains comparison of SigTest vs. Keysight).
Table 1. Comparison of capabilities of the Keysight PCI Express electrical test software and the PCI-SIG
SigTest application
Capability
Keysight PCI Express software
PCI-SIG SigTest
Support for PCIe 3.0
BASE Spec
N/A
Integrated de-embedding support
Number of measurement assertions
Support for PCIe 1.0a, 1.1, 2.0
Reference clock tests
Yes (InfiniiSim waveform transformation toolset required) No
16+
4
Yes
10 (1.1)
Yes
0 1
Automated oscilloscope setup for each measurement Yes, guided
No, single setup
Measurement results
Pass/fail with margin analysis
Pass/fail with measured value
CEM based measurement methodology
Clock recovery method
Yes
Yes
PCI-SIG SigTest or 1st/2nd order PLL
PCI-SIG SigTest
Brick wall filter (2.0 testing)
Custom HTML report generation
Support for low power device
Selectable number of tests performed
Multi-trial run support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
No
Debug mode for “what if” analysis
Compliance test boards supported
Yes
No
CBB1, CBB2, CLB1, CLB2
CBB1, CBB2, CLB1, CLB2
1. PCI-Sig offers a separate utility (Clock_Jitter) for analyzing reference clock phase jitter.