Vanguard PMC Bus Analyzer, Exerciser, Protocol Checker & Compliance Checker for PMC

The Vanguard PMC Bus Analyzer is a complete solution for PCI / PCI-X analysis, exercising, protocol detection, and compliance checking in a PMC environment. The product includes a 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet interface, taking the power and flexibility found in VMETRO's range of Bus Analyzers to unprecedented levels of productivity.

For the Vanguard PMC, a single, fully integrated module has been designed due to the size restrictions imposed by the PMC form factor. The unique design allows the Vanguard PMC Networked Bus Analyzer to carry another PMC module on top. This is a fundamental feature, allowing analysis of the PCI/PCI-X bus without having to remove a PMC module. The PMC P4 connector is also passed through, to accommodate PMC modules with rear I/O (e.g. to P2ac on VME boards). The bus analyzer is controlled from a PC running Windows and VMETRO's BusView graphical user interface or an Application Programming Interface (API).

State Analyzer
The State Analyzer of the Vanguard PMC captures and displays 64- or 32-bit PCI-X/PCI bus activity up to 133 MHz with highly advanced (yet simple to use) triggering, filtering and counting capabilities. To provide optimum bus analysis for a given problem, the state analyzer offers a choice of three sampling modes, i.e. Clock Mode, Transfer Mode and Standard Mode.

Exercisers
The two Exerciser versions (basic and enhanced) available for the Vanguard PMC are flexible and easy to use. The Vanguard exercisers allow concurrent operation of two DMA engines, a target memory with I/O and memory spaces, and a command executer. A flexible script feature allows test scripts to be made and tasks to be automated.

Protocol Checker
The Vanguard PMC features an optional protocol checker for PCI-X and PCI. This versatile feature automatically detects up to 71 PCI-X and 45 PCI protocol errors, helping the user to track down bus hardware errors without the need to understand the nature of the problem. The protocol checker can run in the background when other analyzer functions of the Vanguard PMC are active. As an example, the state analyzer, and the bus utilization statistics can all be active at the same time while the protocol checker runs in the background, screening the bus for errors. If the protocol checker is used as the trigger source for the analyzer(s), the state and timing analyzers will then provide a comprehensive picture of the bus activity around the point when an error was found. This helps the user to identify and correct the problem.