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Agilent error injector stress-tests PCI Express

Jam session for PCI Express

Agilent Technologies’ PCI Express Jammer (N5323A) provides designers working using the fast serial bus with a way to carry out a comprehensive range of reliability tests. PCI Express (2.5 Gtransfers/sec at Generation 1, and 5 GT/sec at Gen. 2) is adaptive to traffic density: it continuously auto-scales in speed and the number of lanes in use. The Jammer or in-line error injector provides a means of checking that your interface will respond correctly in all circumstances. Physically, it takes the form of an extender module that plugs in to the PCIe slot, and that hosts your PCIe card. A USB cable connects it to a PC running the tool’s graphical-interface software. You can also use it with, and cross-trigger it by, Agilent’s E2960B PCIe analyser.
With the Jammer you can inject errors that your system should be able to correct, and verify that it does so; you can also inject non-correctable but non-fatal errors (“poisoned transaction-level packets), and non-correctable, fatal errors. This, Agilent says, distinguishes it from an exerciser, allowing corner-case testing and compliance testing in stress conditions. You can test the bus with multiple operating systems, and re-create error conditions reported from in-service use of your product. The Jammer will test for hardware-level conditions such as disparity error, and your system’s tolerance of it; and you can use the card in a triggered mode to inject errors on specific conditions. The Jammer operates with up to 8-lane PCIe, and costs from $27,500.