Data Transit Provides PCI Express Technology with Multi Protocol Analyzer Support

Developers can now analyze PCI express, Serial ATA, Serial Attached SCSI and a dozen other buses simultaneously

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, CA. (February 17, 2004) -- Data Transit Corporation, the leading supplier of modular bus protocol analyzers delivers the ability to do multi-analysis with PCI Express* technology. This feature is unique to Data Transit's bus analyzers and allows information from two or more different protocols to be time stitched together on the same screen. Having all system protocols synchronized by time stamp is essential to debugging complex multi-protocol based systems. For example, tracking the data payload between two different protocols is not possible with a single protocol analyzer. By using this tool multi-analysis becomes a reality allowing engineers to troubleshoot and solve problems they would not be able to do otherwise.

PCI express based systems are adding high speed protocols such as SATA and SAS as their interconnecting technology to storage peripherals. Servers, RAID systems, and desktops have always used a multi-protocol approach to design. Now PCI Express serves as the primary interconnect to all other system protocols in these products.

"The integration of systems with PCI Express and storage protocols is an indication that this new bus type will become a core building block for storage companies," said Jim Pappas, director of initiative marketing for the Intel's Enterprise Products Group. "Tools targeted at multi-protocols will be required to keep up with the needs of development teams."

Used on 3 continents, Data Transit's PCI Express analyzer has become an indispensable tool for protocol analysis. Data Transit's PCI Express solution has grown over the last few months to include features such as CRC for x1, polarity inversion and support for (TSO) training sequence ordered sets. The analyzer can take large traces of up to 256 million events. The "map like" interface is an efficient way to describe serial protocols that have large event streams.

"Simultaneous analysis of different buses and support for key protocols such as PCI express make us the tool of choice for bus analysis," said Dale Smith, Founder, President and CTO of Data Transit. "Ensuring the productivity of our customers is what we do best."

Last year Data Transit successfully entered the SATA test market with its timely release of its SATA version of Bus Doctor analyzer. Now this year customers are upgrading to the newer 3.0 Gb/s SAS/SATA narrow and wide port systems. Improvements to the product include new features such as SATA II extensions and ATAPI decoding/triggering.

Data Transit will be showcasing the multi-analysis capabilities of its Bus Doctor Analyzers at IDF San Francisco on February 17th through the 19th.

About Data Transit
Founded in 1990, Data Transit designs, manufactures and sells the Bus Doctor™ line of protocol analyzers and the new PacketMaker™ traffic generators. Data Transit has grown from a niche storage analysis product provider to be a major player in the test and measurement industry. The company's mission is to offer the best analysis tools for complex development environments such as network servers and storage area networks, SANs. Its Bus Doctor modular approach allows users to attach different bus pods to a single analyzer as needed. This unique methodology provides customers with a superior value proposition while giving them the advantage of using a single tool for multiple applications. The Bus Doctor is also differentiated from its competitors by its powerful triggering, large trace buffers and multiple-bus analysis capabilities with a single reference clock and cross triggering. Data Transit supports fifteen buses including Serial ATA, PCI Express, Serial Attached SCSI, Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet, iSCSI, PCI, ATA/ATAPI, SCSI, USB and others.

PacketMaker and Bus Doctor are trademarks of Data Transit Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective companies.