Teledyne LeCroy Announces New SFF-8639 Single Port Interposer

The SFF-8639 single port interposer supports PCIe host interfaces such as NVM Express (NMVe), SCSI Express (SOP/PQI), SATA Express (AHCI/PCIe) and native PCI Express protocols at data rates from 2.5 GT/s up to 8 GT/s.

Teledyne LeCroy now provides the connectivity required for probing PCIe storage host interfaces using the SFF-8639 interposer. For the first time users can monitor and analyze multiple PCIe storage host interfaces with a single set of tools, said John Wiedemeier, Product Marketing Manager for the Interconnect Communications Group, Teledyne LeCroy. The Summit family of products provides essential protocol test tools to ensure quality and performance for PCIe-based SSD development.

The storage industry is investing in a transition to PCI Express direct attached SSD solutions, and NVM Express is one of the key protocols helping to drive this transition, said Jim Pappas, Director of Technology Initiatives, Intel Corporation. The new probing and analysis tool from Teledyne LeCroy is an illustration of the growing number of tools available for the NVM Express community. Developers may now use probing and analysis tools to aid their measurement set up and testing, driving product improvements and increase competitiveness.

The SFF-8639 single port interposer provides connectivity and monitoring capability for the recently announced SFF-8639 connector targeted at enterprise storage equipment. This SFF-8639 connector provides flexible drive connectivity for NVM Express, SCSI Express, SATA Express, SAS, SATA, and native PCIe 3.0 host interface devices in a serviceable and hot-pluggable drive bay sometimes referred to as Express Bay. The SFF-8639 single port interposer can be used with 2-1/2 or 3 sized drives. To use this interposer, the drive is inserted into a drive tray on the interposer that supports a mechanical and electrical connection to a SFF-8639 connector. The interposer taps all PCIe protocol traffic between the host backplane and the storage device and records it on the PCIe protocol analyzer, where protocol issues and performance metrics can be further analyzed and debugged.

The SCSI Express community will greatly benefit from having a complete protocol analysis solution for its SCSI Express-based devices and systems, said Martin Czekalski, President of the SCSI Trade Association and Interface Architecture Initiatives Manager, Seagate Technology. We are pleased that companies such as Teledyne LeCroy, which have a high level of expertise in storage protocol analysis, are providing new tools that will expedite SCSI Express-enabled products to the marketplace.

Three years ago, Teledyne LeCroy was the first company to introduce a PCI Express protocol analyzer with NVM Express decoding functionality. Since that time Teledyne LeCroy has added decoding for SCSI Express (SOP/PQI) and SATA Express (AHCI/PCIe). Integrating all three PCIe SSD technologies into a single protocol analyzer gives developers versatile tools that can show essential details regarding proper data transmission and bus performance. These tools have been at the center of much of the PCIe SSD interoperability testing that has occurred over the last few years.