Keysight Launches PCIe 7.0 Testing Platform for AI Systems

Keysight Technologies announced a protocol testing platform for PCI Express (PCIe) 7.0 for engineers who are designing next generation data-centre systems, accelerators and AI servers. The solution aims to assist teams in raising new devices, troubleshooting communications issues and ensuring compliance prior to deployment of products.

PCIe 7.0 can raise the raw data rate of PCIe 6.0 to 128 gigatransfers per second (GT/s). For bidirectional bandwidth, 512 GB/s is the standard for the 16-lane configuration and will be relevant to bidirectional traffic between GPUs, between accelerators and GPUs or switches and between memory and storage.

This is because it also makes it more challenging to validate. Engineers need to verify links are established reliably, devices communicate as expected and data transactions are error-free. Issues related to link training, FLIT-based encoding and transaction-layer packets can be tricky to diagnose, especially if multiple components from multiple vendors must interoperate.

Keysight’s new platform integrates a protocol analyser, exerciser, test platform and analysis software. The analyser can store protocol traffic for analysis and the exerciser can assist and guide engineers to test their devices in various conditions. The tools are designed to work together to assist in development from silicon bring up to debugging, interoperability and compliance testing.

According to Keysight, its architecture allows for the reliable establishment of a link and capture of protocol traces without manual tuning of the analyser, in order to get engineers to useful measurements more quickly. Previously identified issues may lessen the chance of redesigns at a later stage that become more disruptive as system architecture becomes more complex.

The launch also serves as an example of the significance of working together across the hardware ecosystem. Keysight partnered with Synopsys to validate Synopsys’ PCIe 7.0 IP solution and had a working link between production silicon and protocol test equipment.

Bandwidth is not the challenge for AI infrastructure developers anymore. 

Reliable connections between more and more powerful components are important, too. Keysight’s platform is designed to help engineers resolve those integration issues earlier, so they can’t delay the next generation of high-speed computing infrastructures.

Image Source – Keysight Technologies