N5394A DVI Electrical Performance Validation and Compliance Software for Infiniium Oscilloscopes

Verify and debug your DVI designs

Keysight Technologies, Inc. N5394A DVI electrical performance validation and compliance software for Infiniium Series oscilloscopes provides you with a fast and easy way to verify and debug your digital visual interface (DVI) designs for add-in cards, cables and motherboard systems. The DVI electrical test software allows you to automatically execute DVI electrical checklist tests and displays the results in a flexible report format. In addition to the measurement data, the report provides a margin analysis that shows how closely your device passed or failed each test.

To make measurements with the N5394A DVI electrical test software, you also need the DVI Compliance Test Kit test fixtures, available through the DDWG or Silicon Image, for hardware clock recovery and making measurements.

The N5394A DVI electrical test software performs a wide range of tests required to meet the DVI-1.0 electrical specifications for addin cards, cables and motherboard systems as documented in section 4 of the base specification by the DDWG1. To meet signal quality requirements, your product must successfully pass compliance testing based on the DVI specification. You must perform the tests included on the checklist before you submit your product for full compliance testing. The N5394A DVI electrical test software helps you execute a subset of the checklist tests for transmitters (Tx) and cables that can be measured with an oscilloscope.

Features

The N5394A DVI electrical test software offers several features to simplify the validation of DVI designs:

– Test setup wizard for ease-of-use

– All of the electrical tests specified by DVI test specification, full compliance of DVI tests

– Measurement process configurability

– Automated oscilloscope measurement setup

– Test results report generation

– Pass/fail margin analysis

With the DVI electrical test software, you can use the same oscilloscope you use for everyday debugging to perform automated testing and margin analysis based on the DVI-specified test checklist.

N5394A saves you time

The N5394A DVI electrical test software saves you time by setting the stage for automatic execution of DVI electrical tests. Part of the difficulty of performing electrical tests for DVI is hooking up the oscilloscope, setting up the proper configuration, and then analyzing the measured results by comparing them to limits published in the specification. The DVI electrical test software does much of this work for you. In addition, if you discover a problem with your device, debug tools are available to aid in root-cause analysis.

The N5394A DVI electrical test software offers the four fundamental DVI electrical tests. The software automatically configures the oscilloscope for each test, and it provides an informative results report that includes margin analysis indicating how close your product is to passing or failing that specification. For many tests, a selection is allowed on specific measurement parameters. Clock recovery of the TMDS clock is accomplished with the DVI Compliance Test Kit Clock Recovery Unit (CRU) board to ensure proper test results. See Table 2 for a complete list of the measurements made by the DVI electrical test software.

Easy test definition

The N5394A DVI electrical test software extends the ease-of-use advantages of Keysight’s Infiniium Series oscilloscopes to testing DVI designs. The Keysight automated test engine walks you quickly through the steps required to define the tests, set up the test, perform the tests, and view the test results. You can select a category of tests all at once, or specify individual tests. You can save tests and configurations as project files and recall them later for quick testing and review of previous test results. Straightforward menus let you perform tests with a minimum of mouse clicks.

Configurability and guided connections

The N5394A DVI electrical test software provides flexibility in your test setup. It guides you to make connection changes with hookup diagrams when the tests you select require it.

For critical test parameters such as the horizontal voltage swing (V^swing) levels and worst-case intersections of the transmitter eye opening, you can choose to have the software automatically determine these values or manually set them on the displayed waveform.

All DVI electrical compliance tests you perform are based on the DVI Compliance Test Kit test fixtures. The Clock Recovery Unit (CRU) is used for hardware clock recovery. The Test Point Access Plug Board (TPA2-Plug) is used for compliance tests at the transmitter. The Test Point Access Receptacle Board (TPA2-Receptacle) is used for compliance tests at the end of a DVI cable and the input to the receiver. Connection to the compliance test fixtures is via the Keysight InfiniiMax active differential probes. The DVI Compliance Test Kit also includes files and procedures for creating the pseudo-random and half-clock patterns for the DVI product being tested.

Reports with margin analysis

In addition to providing you with measurement results, the N5394A DVI electrical test software provides a report format that shows you not only where your product passes or fails, but also reports how close you are to the limits specified for a particular test assertion. You select the margin test report parameter, which means you can specify the level at which warnings are issued to alert you to the electrical tests where your product is operating close to the official test limit defined by the DVI 1.0 specification for a given test assertion.

Extensibility

You may add additional custom tests or steps to your application using the N5467A User Defined Application (UDA) development tool. Use UDA to develop functional “Add-Ins” that you can plug into your application.

Add-ins may be designed as:

– Complete custom tests (with configuration variables and connection prompts)

– Any custom steps such as pre or post processing scripts, external instrument control and your own device control