Agilent Tests Faster

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced another in a series of measurement innovations for its high-performance bit error ratio testers (BERTs). With the release of the industry's fastest Total Jitter (TJ) measurement capability on Agilent's BERTs, R&D engineers in the computer, semiconductor and communications industries can now easily perform high-quality TJ measurements more than 40 times faster than with any existing BER measurement solution on the market. Using this new measurement enables them to perform high-quality device characterization while speeding the development of new products. The measurement of Total Jitter is important to ensure the proper working of high-speed devices such as PCI Express II, Serial ATA III and 8X Fibre Channel.

"The new Fast TJ measurement makes a significant contribution to testing by reducing the measurement time from days to minutes," said Siegfried Gross, vice president and general manager of Agilent's Digital Verifications Solutions Division.

To ensure an accurate measurement, the test environment must be precisely controlled. This leads to very few total jitter measurements in a design. The Fast TJ measurement technique uses a new statistical algorithm that is up to 40 times faster, which enables R&D engineers to run TJ measurements more often, resulting in a better device characterization. The Fast TJ measurement is simple to make, requiring the user to select only the desired bit error ratio and the resolution accuracy. The uncertainty of the TJ measurement is also determined, which defines the significance of the result. The Fast TJ measurement is independent of jitter modeling and works on any jitter distribution, further increasing overall confidence in the measurement.

Agilent's new Fast TJ measurement software is the implementation of the award-winning paper "Total Jitter Measurement at Low Probability Levels, Using Optimized BERT Scan Method," presented at the DesignCon West in January 2005. The paper is available at www.designcon.com/pdf/7-ta4_mueller.pdf.

The Fast TJ measurement is included in the new firmware releases of the Agilent ParBERT 81250 measurement suite and the high-performance N4901B/02B Serial BERTs. The firmware updates are free for download at www.agilent.com/find/FTJ.

The ParBERT 81250 is Agilent's modular bit error ratio test solution for parallel and multiple serial computer and telecom high-speed communication ports up to 13.5 Gb/s. The Agilent N4900 Serial BERT family includes high-performance N4901B/02B Serial BERTs as well as the new cost-effective N4906B Serial BERT, with testing up to 12.5 Gb/s.

Agilent Technologies Inc.