Press Releases

New PCI Express™ Development Capabilities from Catalyst Enterprises Used To Test and Verify Customers Products

San Jose, Calif., November 14, 2003 - Catalyst Enterprises, a leading manufacturer of development tools for emerging serial and parallel bus technologies, today announced PCI Express Development Capabilities which customers have successfully used to test and verify their products. The new features speed customers compliance and validation designs incorporating PCI Express buses.

PCI Express is an emerging serial bus technology expected to dominate the desktop and server market by 2005. As such, there is significant demand for test and measurement tools that expedite the development of PCI Express designs. The new features to Catalyst’s PCI Express development toolset help engineers solidify their designs more quickly in order to stay on schedule.

“PCI Express is still a relatively new technology, and the high-tech industry is in the process of learning the intricacies of its compliance and validation. That customers have used to test and verify their new design capabilities is a significant step forward for the PCI Express development community,” said Varin Singh, Sales and Marketing Director, Catalyst Enterprises. “We are continually enhancing our SPX-4E Exerciser and PXP-100 development platform to ensure our customers have the most comprehensive Fully Featured PCI Express design package available.”

These important features to the Catalyst PCI Express development toolset include:

  • Upstream & Downstream Mode – use the SPX-4E Exerciser in conjunction with the PXP-100 development platform as an upstream device – or as an agent to communicate with upstream devices – when testing PCI Express 1.0 and 1.0a devices

  • Lane Training – capture the entire lane training and potential issues for debugging, even prior to establishing lane configurations, without the use of interposers, mid-bus probes, or other devices

  • Slow Operation(622 megabits – 2.5 gigabits) – utilize a slower reference clock in the initial phases of device development

    • Catalyst’s PCI Express development tools include the SPX-4E Exerciser and PXP-100 development platform. For 4x PCI Express requirements, the SPX Exerciser supports PCI Express Specifications 1.0 and 1.0a. The SPX Exerciser features allows users to program packets and fields down to the physical and data link layers – and for more advanced stages of development, the physical and data link layer protocols are automatically managed by the exerciser hardware, enabling the user to focus on the transaction layer exclusively. Catalyst’s PXP-100 PCI Express development platform is a passive backplane that connects a card under test to the Catalyst SPX Exerciser as an upstream device – eliminating the need for a motherboard to connect to the card. Catalyst’s PCI Express development tools are available in multiple configurations supporting various lane widths of PCI Express. For complete details, call (408) 365-3846.

    About Catalyst Enterprises

    Founded in 1992 in San Jose, Calif., Catalyst Enterprises manufactures analyzer tools for PCI Express, PCI, PCI-X, USB 2.0, Bluetooth, and other data communication protocols. Catalyst’s analyzer architecture uses reconfigurable hardware cores that can be updated in the field with software. These flexible hardware tools are powered by a unique, Dual-Mode GUI interface that combines an “Easy” mode with maximum automation for instant data capture and an “Advanced” mode that provides maximum customization for hard to find problems. The company provides complimentary software updates and lifetime technical support for all its analyzer products. Catalyst’s goal is to assist its customers in their efforts to bring quality products to production as efficiently as possible.

    Contact:

    Varin Singh
    Catalyst Enterprises, Inc.
    info@getcatalyst.com
    (408) 365-3846 x113

    Catalyst Enterprises is a registered trademark of Catalyst Enterprises, Inc. All other trade names referenced are the service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.