Teledyne LeCroy Announces M-PHY Protocol Analyzer Supporting M-PCIe

CHICAGO, March 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- MIPI Alliance Members Meeting -- Teledyne LeCroy, the worldwide leader in protocol test solutions, today announced its new portable Eclipse™ X34 MIPI^® M-PHY Protocol Analyzer for testing mobile computing products. This protocol analyzer is the first to support the PCIe 3.1 specification, which includes the M-PCIe ECN released by PCI-SIG^® last year. M-PCIe combines the PCI Express^® (PCIe^®) protocol layer with the low power M-PHY physical layer bringing high-end PCIe performance and software capabilities to low power mobile devices. With this product announcement, there is finally an analysis tool that will enable developers to monitor, capture, decode and analyze M-PCIe traffic.

M-PHY technology is targeted at mobile devices like tablets, smart phones and thin laptops. Forecast projections indicate that the quantity of PCs sold will decline as these smaller M-PHY based mobile products grow in volume. M-PCIe architecture will solve many of the development and performance issues facing engineers as they work towards next generation mobile products.

"Mobile computing products will benefit from M-PHY's features of low power and scalable asymmetrical receive and transmit channels," said Joel Huloux, chairman of the MIPI Alliance. "Verification and conformance testing will play an important role in keeping devices interoperable. We are pleased that Teledyne LeCroy provides an M-PHY Protocol analyzer to help with this effort and will support the newly emerging development around M-PCIe devices."

The Eclipse X34 can monitor, capture, decode, and analyze multiple transmission modes with different bit-signaling, clocking schemes and rates that support bandwidth ranges (M-PHY Gears 1 to 3). The analyzer is gear 4 upgradeable. Two independent reference clocks, Rata A and B, that operate at 19.2 and 26 MHz at 8B/10B encoding can be tracked and displayed. All PMW Modes G0 to G7 are supported and displayed in the trace view. The application display is highly configurable and can be modified to fit most users debugging styles. A customizable multi-state trigger makes it easy to discover protocol issues on the bus. Features such as multiple local, global timers and counters allow the user advanced control to create sophisticated trigger sequences. The Eclipse can time correlate its traces to other Teledyne LeCroy supported protocols and buses. This multi-protocol support will make it useful to help debug DDR memory and other serial protocols on low power devices.

The Eclipse X34 features up to 4 lanes of traffic capture and up to 16 GB trace depth. Teledyne LeCroy will also provide a wide variety of probing connectivity options, including SMA, multi-lead solder-down tapping, a M.2 form factor interposer and a special Mid-bus probe designed for M-PHY. The M-PHY Mid-bus probe is in the process of being defined by Teledyne LeCroy and will build on the existing footprint for PCI Express, giving developers another method to get probing access to M-PHY signals.

The Eclipse X34 also supports USB 2.0/3.0 and Ethernet 10/100/1000 LAN as standard features. By connecting over a LAN, engineers can operate the system remotely (e.g., control an analyzer operating in a remote lab). Also, engineers working collaboratively can time-share use of a single analyzer, reducing the need for multiple systems, and increasing the cost effectiveness of the product.

The Eclipse X34 is licensable to accommodate different lane, memory and gear configurations to match user requirements with available budgets. The upward compatibility and 13 month warranty of the Eclipse also provides investment protection for current Gear 1/2/3 users who plan to upgrade to Gear 4 devices in the future.

"As an early supporter and enabler of the M-PCIe architecture, Teledyne LeCroy is an important member of PCI-SIG," said Al Yanes, PCI SIG Chairman and President. "Products such as this are an important indicator of industry support for this new technology, giving users a new tool to help validate their M-PCIe implementations."

The portable Eclipse protocol analyzer is lightweight and is designed to support multiple M-PHY interfaces for the mobile computing market. These interfaces will be rolled out in the near future. The first interface supported will be M-PCIe which combines a PCIe protocol layer with the low power M-PHY physical layer bringing high-end PCIe performance and software capabilities to low power mobile devices. The Eclipse can decode and analyze PCI Express and RRAP protocols, display M-PHY states such as the hibern8, sleep, stall, burst and recognize, tracks, and traces on all power mode transitions.

"Teledyne LeCroy has strongly supported PCI Express architecture with protocol test tools for all three generations of the current specification, and we will continue to support the specification as it expands into mobile computing with the new Eclipse X34 Protocol Analyzer. Bringing all of this analysis capability to M-PCIe technology will help the development community meet product schedules," said John Wiedemeier, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Teledyne LeCroy's Protocol Solutions Group. "The application interface is very familiar to this community and the analysis feature set is well equipped to meet the challenges of M-PCIe test."

Features that are now in their third generation—such as BitTracer™, a raw mode recording capability that shows channel information like bit symbols, binary and 10-bit data—will help describe what is happening right at the MPHY electrical level. In addition, other features such as hierarchical displays, real-time statistics, protocol traffic summaries, detailed error reports, powerful test scripting and the ability to create user-defined test reports will allow developers to quickly troubleshoot intricate problems and finish their projects on time.

"Today, Teledyne LeCroy becomes the first protocol test company to support the M-PCIe specification with our Eclipse X34 MIPI M-PHY Protocol Analysis platform. This new platform provides the flexibility needed to support the full range of M-PHY-based protocol standards, while at the same time providing the most cost effective solution for M-PHY development and test," said Joe Mendolia, Vice President of Marketing, Teledyne LeCroy. "We look forward to working closely with the mobile computing community to accelerate new development and ensure interoperability."

Recently, Teledyne LeCroy has made available a free software utility called TeleScan™ PE which supports system scan, read, write, and register decoding features for the new M-PCIe specification. TeleScan PE is used by PCI Express developers to better understand how their computer systems are configured with PCI Express-based devices. The utility will support scanning on host machines using Microsoft Windows^® 7 or Windows 8, and also on Linux systems.

Pricing and Availability
The Eclipse X34 is available now to order. Prices start at under $40K. For additional information, contact

Teledyne LeCroy at 1-800-5LeCroy (1-800-553-2769) or visit Teledyne LeCroy's web site at teledynelecroy.com.

About Teledyne LeCroy
Teledyne LeCroy is a leading manufacturer of advanced test instruments that measure, analyze, and verify complex electronic signals. The Company offers high-performance oscilloscopes and protocol test solutions used by electronic design engineers in a wide range of application and end markets. Teledyne LeCroy is based in Chestnut Ridge, NY.  For more information, visit Teledyne LeCroy's website at teledynelecroy.com.

About PCI-SIG
PCI-SIG is the consortium that owns and manages PCI specifications as open industry specifications. The organization defines I/O (input/output) specifications consistent with the needs of its members. Currently, PCI-SIG is comprised of nearly 800 industry-leading member companies. To join PCI-SIG, and for a list of the Board of Directors, visit www.pcisig.com.

About MIPI Alliance
MIPI® Alliance (MIPI) develops interface specifications for mobile and mobile-influenced industries. Founded in 2003, the organization has more than 260 member companies worldwide, has over 12 active working groups and has delivered 45+ specifications within the mobile ecosystem in the last decade. Members of the organization include handset manufacturers, device OEMs, software providers, semiconductor companies, application processor developers, IP tool providers, test and test equipment companies, as well as camera, tablet and laptop manufacturers. For more information, please visit www.mipi.org.

© 2014 by Teledyne LeCroy. All rights reserved. Specifications are subject to change without notice.

PCI-SIG, PCI Express, PCIe and M-PCIe are trademarks or registered trademarks of PCI-SIG.

Eclipse, BitTracer and TeleScan are trademarks of Teledyne LeCroy

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SOURCE Teledyne LeCroy