User:TheProtocologist/Sandbox

PCI Express

Lecroy initially developed a family of PCI Express analysers called the PETracer the original version was an evolution of their Infiniband analyser (also offered by other companies rebadged or reboxed). This was logical due to PCI Express having a strong ancestoral link with Infiniband. It was also significant that LeCroy offered the only 16lane protocol analyser during the first generation of PCI Express development. As the technology matured and the develpment cycle for Gen1 products moved to the broader market LeCroy has added implimentation specific probing tools to address form factors using this technology in other than the PC market. Probes for the use of PCI express protocol in AMCC, Express card, PCI Express Modules and so on have been developed for the system. At the same time and 'all-in-one' addin card version of the analyser for the narrower lane widths (x1-x4) was offered in the Edge Product Family. While a chassis based system is good for the versatility needed by the early adopters the addin card format can be more familiar to the developer who previously developed on PCI or PCI-X

When the Gen2 (5GHz data rate) version of PCI Express was introduced a new bread of analyser was required LeCroy introuced the Summit Product Family which added some new technology to provide enhanced Logic Analyser type functionality using the same probe used by the protocol analyser. This feature greatly simplified the connection setup time of this type of functionality and has been a major contribution to the development of the standard.

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA)
When the Parallel ATA bus moved to Serial ATA standard LeCroy's expertise in serial protocols was a key assitance and the development and standardisation of the new protocol which initially ran at a 1.5Ghz data rate.

The SATracer Product Family became recognised as the industry leading tool very quickly. When the Parallel SCSI bus adopted similar electrical and signalling capability to SATA, LeCroy was the first company to support the new '4-wide' aggregated serial links on the SASTracer Product . This has supported the develpment of ever more powerful clusters of disk drives. LeCroy was uniquely positioned when this standard was developed since they had purchased the leading Parallel SCSI Bus analyser technology from Verisys and had developed fibre channel analysers too. Following its trend of develping innovative test tools LeCroy invented the InFusion Error Injector. This extended the test capabilities provided by the existing analyser/exerciser tools by allowing the developer to inject systematic errors to live links and verifiy not just the hardware but the supporting applications too. In general off the shelf devices are not designed to predicably generate faults which makes testing supervisory systems challenging. The Infusion jammer is ideally suited to this task. As the Standards have evolved so have the test tools. SAS doubled its inital data rate from 3Gbit/s to 6Gbit/s to which LeCroy responded with Avalanche Product Family and the STX Product Family. The latter is notable for being the industry first system that supports of the new multiplexed data channels and for offering a 6Gbit host exerciser in one system.

Bluetooth

The CATC division of LeCroy invented the first Bluetooth air packet sniffer. Bluetooth is an intrinsically secure protocol with the radio changing frequency 1600 times per second and using a pseudo random sequence of 79 frequencies determined by the master device in a given group of devices. CATC successfully patented a methodolgy for unobtrusively syncronising a thirdparty radio to the piconent that forms the basis of all Bluetooth air packet recievers. Their initial product the Merlin was used by a large percentage of the developers of Bluetooth devices for the 1.0 and 1.1 versions of the specification. As with other standards however Bluetooth is evolving and adding new features requiring Test tool developers like LeCroy to evolve with them. The

• BTTracer Product Family was unique in offering both a dual radio tracking system (important for the inital debug and development of the Bluetooth 1.2 AFH feature) and in offering the worlds first Bluetooth exerciser. Later they developed a device called the Merlin II which supported all the Bluetooth standards from 1.0 to 2.0 as well as bringing the ability to dynamically trace the signal strengths of participating devices. This particualr feature has show the real cause of a problem and avoided engineering time wasted on exploring red herrings based on lack of information.
  

USB Universal Serial Bus

LeCroy has the longest history of working with the USB protocol and has developed several systems to address the test needs of the USB developer. LeCroy Scopes are cerified for electrical compliance testing. LeCroy offered the first USB Protocol analuser in 1992 (evolved from the CATC Access bus analyser) called the USB Inspector this was a very popular ISA Card based analyser which was subsequently replaced by the USB Detective which connected via the parallel port. When the USB 1.1 specification was released LeCroy responded with what was to become the industry standard device for debugging USB1.1 called the USB Chief. This device was particualry specical because it not only added the ability to act as a USB host device (execiser) but it also offered two channel recording allowing the new interoperability compliance tests to be recorded even when hubs were involved. The USB Advisor was the first USB analyser to support the new 480Mbps data rate which came as part of the USB2.0 specification. In 2001 when the USB org announced the 'OTG' extension, LeCroy in conjuction with Mentor Graphics demonstrated the proof of concept OTG on behalf of the USB org with the new USBTracer Product Family . The Product family was extended to include the SBAE-30 series which offered integrated device emuloation. The USBMobile HS</> was introduced to assit the after market field support requirements and ever concious of the small/home developer LeCroy offered the Conquest Product Family.

Histroically, Lecroy has also developed key devices for this protocol. The first USB to Ethernet link which was developed by LeCroy (see below) was instrumental in enabling the US domestic DSL market at a time when PC's with built in ethernet cards were a rarity. They withdrew from this market when almost ever PC is now sold with Ethernet as standard, although the author notes that it stimulated a thriving market of 'me too' devices.
LeCroy also created unique production test devices for validating USB enabled products on the production line The HPT UPT and subsequently the UPT2 are still used by many OEM providers to verify the USB ports on their systems prior to shipping. The PC you are using now was probably tested by one of these devices.

Ultra Wideband (UWB) / Wireless USB (WUSB)

• UWBTracer Product Family
• AirCom Product Family

LeCroy Kick started the interoperability testing of this technology by offering to host the early interop sessions and providing a neutral territory for competing developers to be able to test their compatibility

Fibre Channel

• FCTracer Product Family

InfiniBand

• IBTracer Product Family

IEEE 1394 (FireWire)

• FireInspector