Serial ATA (SATA) Pod for Bus Doctor Analyzer

The Serial ATA Pod turns the Bus Doctor into a full-featured protocol analyzer, with the depth, ease-of-use, protocol decoding and statistics that are needed by software and systems testers. It also provides the features needed by hardware engineers including multi-level triggering, filtering, state configuration post-capture filtering of Serial ATA packets.





Serial ATA (SATA) Displays
At the Command level, the Serial ATA analyzer provides a big-picture view for testers who are troubleshooting system-level or application-level issues. You can easily identify the direction of each command, the FIS type or type of out-of-band (OOB) signal, description, and time stamp.

The State display provides decoding of each Double-word transfer for users who need to monitor Serial ATA software, device drivers, or firmware. If you want to see the Data Byte Name and value, scrambled data, 10b data patterns, and running disparity for each event, just mouse-over the data column and a pop-up window will show you the information.

The analyzer allows for examining captured data at the Command, State, and Signal levels. The different display formats can be individually displayed or simultaneously displayed. When displayed simultaneously, each display can be automatically synchronized with the others, or used independently. A histogram provides a graphical summary of trace activity for the entire trace and makes it easy to point and click to any position within the trace.



Serial ATA (SATA) Capturing
The Serial ATA analyzer provides a variety of capture configurations. Each of these options can be enabled or disabled as needed:

* Timing Mode (Store all transitions)
* State Mode
* Capture All Valid Frames
* Filter SYNCs and ALIGNs
* Filter Primitives
* Filter CONT Primitive and data after CONT
* Filter Errors
* Custom State Modes can also be created.

The BusDoctor's Capture Engine pushes protocol recording to new limits with the following features:

- Transitional Timestamping
- Bandwidth - 4.5 Gbytes/sec
- Depth - Stores up to 4 Gbytes
- Segmentable Trace Buffer





Serial ATA (SATA) Triggering
The Serial ATA Analyzer provides you high-level trigger configurations for most common trigger scenarios. The high-level triggers provide drop-down boxes that enable the user to select specific commands, LBAs, sector counts, features, primitives, FIS types and field values, errors, and out-of-band (OOB) signals from a list without memorizing codes or positions. Users can also create and save custom triggers.

Triggering is used to stop the trace when a specific event or sequence of events occur. The analyzer also provides for stopping when the buffer is full, or looping endlessly until the user manually stops the trace. High-Level triggering options are provided for each bus. The User can also create custom triggers using the powerful Trigger Sequencer





Serial ATA (SATA) Analyzer Trace Filtering
The Serial ATA Analyzer allows you to filter out a portion of the data to conserve buffer space. Users can also create and save custom pre-capture filters. After capturing, the Show/Hide controls for the Command and State Listings provide you with a variety of criteria for selection of portions of the trace to display.

Pre-configured filters for each bus allow the user to conserve buffer space and reduce the stored data to those items that are of interest. Custom filters can also be created.









Serial ATA (SATA) Statistics
The Real-Time Monitor can be easily configured so you can see interesting and usable bus statistics while taking a trace or at any other time.

Dedicated hardware is provided for counting events. Software processes this data providing simple, or ratios of events per time or other events such as Transfers per Second, Transfers per Command, or Data Transfers per Error. These ratios are shown as Current Values and Peak Values, providing a summary of the changes over time.



Protocols, Standards, & Speed

Protocols & Standards:

* Serial ATA (SATA)
* SATA II extensions
* ATA/ATAPI 6

Speeds:
* 1x = 3.0 Gb/sec
* Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC)
* SSC is supported with model DR-SATA-3000

The analyzer decodes many of the high-level protocols that are transmitted on each bus. The Command Listing is typically used for displaying high-level protocols which may be transferred across a bus, while the State Listing typically displays native, low-level protocols.



Since 1997, Gillaspy Associates has built a solid reputation for developing strong relationships with our customers by providing quality solutions and ongoing support.