Tektronix TPI4000 protocol test platform

Tektronix has introduced a protocol test platform that allows engineers to analyse, stimulate, stress and characterise high-speed serial links - with support for speeds up to 10 Gbps. With the TPI4000 protocol analyser series, users need one instrument to perform multiple test functions and to look at a variety of protocols such as ethernet, fibre channel, common public radio interface and serial front panel data port.

With the broad acceptance of high-speed serial interfaces, engineers are looking to complement their company oscilloscopes with protocol analysers that can provide insight into the information that is being transferred across the physical layer.

Engineers working with these high-speed serial protocols need to perform a number of tests, including interoperability and compatibility testing, performance optimisation and stress testing.

The series provides a single instrument that can be configured to perform each of these tasks.

The series consists of two models. The TPI4202 is a portable unit with a built-in monitor and keyboard and supports up to eight ports.

The TPI4208 is a 4U rackmount unit that supports up to 32 ports. Each model is configurable with options to support different data rates, to support different protocols and to support different applications.

In a single hardware platform, the TPI4000 can be configured by the user to be any combination of protocol analyser, traffic generator, system stress tester or BER (bit error rate) tester.

The device can support any combination of protocols simultaneously and can be reconfigured by the user to support different protocols. Multiple protocol support allows the user to troubleshoot system-level problems while the ability to reconfigure the TPI4000 to support different protocols reduces total test cost.

The device is said to be the only protocol analyser with a user-editable database that allows users to define custom protocols using the optional Protocol Editor tool.