800G test solutions speed data centre development

Service providers and data centre operators are seeking 800G technology to meet a growing demand in network capacity at the desired cost and power consumption targets.

This is primarily driven by data-hungry applications such as video conferencing, streaming and digital entertainment, which are delivered via wireless technologies such as 4G, 5G and Wi-Fi.

Keysight's new portfolio of electrical and optical analysis solutions enable an 800G ecosystem, consisting of optical components, chipset, switch and semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) vendors, as well as system integrators, to speed design, development, test and validation across the entire design cycle.

"Keysight's close collaborations across the high-speed industry, as well as with standard organisations such as Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF), enable us to deliver first-to-market solutions that accelerate design cycles and technology waves, well before standards mature," said Dr. Joachim Peerlings, vice president of network and data centre solutions at Keysight Technologies.

"Access to a portfolio of 800G test solutions across physical and protocol layers, from simulation to design, validation, conformance and manufacturing, enables our customers to verify interoperability and simplify testing across the workflow using common, uniform interfaces and software automation."

These 800G test solutions allow users to fully explore design margins, while addressing design and conformance validation challenges in an 800G transceiver market which is expected to reach $2.5 billion by 2029 according CIR.

The 800G test solutions include:

• 100Gb/s electrical conformance test
• The first pre-conformance test solution for validating both transmitter and receiver electrical signaling input interfaces according to the 100Gb/s standard currently under development by IEEE and OIF.
• Combines Keysight's Infiniium UXR-Series real-time oscilloscope or digital communication analyser (DCA), 64 Gbaud high performance bit error rate tester (BERT) and pre-conformance test cases for simplified 100Gb/s, 200Gb/s, 400Gb/s and 800Gb/s electrical input interface testing, resulting in accurate and repeatable test results.
• Pre-silicon design verification
• Combines Keysight's IxVerify software, which generates network traffic, with Synopsys ZeBu Server 4 emulation system to accelerate pre-silicon design verification of system-on-chip (SoC) solutions and 800G Ethernet designs.
• Delivers consistent test methodologies, configurations and scripts to accelerate testing from pre-silicon to post-silicon device validation.
• 200Gbps solution for 800G research and pathfinding
• Combines an arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) and an Infiniium UXR-Series real-time oscilloscope to characterise the digital interface including error detection up to 224Gb/s.
• Extends testing into the optical domain using Keysight's 60GHz optical-to-electrical (O/E) converter.
• Physical layer test system (PLTS)
• Establishes signal integrity measurements and performs data post processing of high-speed interconnects, such as cables, backplanes, PCBs and connectors.
• Supports de-embedding techniques on a common platform, enabling users to optimise performance margins in their 800G channel designs.