SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 4, 2012 – Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that Granite River Labs (GRL) in Taipei, Taiwan, is using Agilent’s electronic test solution for Thunderbolt, DisplayPort and Dual-Mode DisplayPort compliance and certification testing. GRL is expected to be the first test lab in Taiwan to offer testing for Intel’s new Thunderbolt technology.
Thunderbolt is a revolutionary I/O technology developed by Intel that provides two channels of 10Gbps bidirectional data. Leading technology companies feature Thunderbolt on their host products. Third-party device vendors currently are in early adoption of Thunderbolt. By midyear, devices and hosts based on Thunderbolt technology will all need to be certified though an authorized test center.
In today’s increasingly complex electronics field, it is important for test houses and designers to have the right tools to test electronic designs for compliance to industry standards. An authorized test center for DisplayPort and Serial ATA, GRL has deep expertise in a wide range of electronic technologies, including HDMI, MHL, PCI Express Gen3, USB 3.0, DDR, and 10G Ethernet. GRL is already working with early Thunderbolt adopters as well.
“We are pleased to be using the Agilent test solution for Thunderbolt in our Taipei lab for precompliance testing,” said Mike Engbretson, chief engineer at GRL. “Agilent provides a complete physical-layer test solution for Thunderbolt. These tests include transmitter, receiver and return loss testing of the 10.3125Gb/s TBT link as well as downstream display tests, which include DisplayPort 1.2 source tests (up to 2.7Gb/s) and Dual-Mode DisplayPort source tests.”
“It’s been exciting to work with GRL to enable Thunderbolt, DisplayPort and Dual-Mode DisplayPort technology,” said Allan Chang, general manager, Agilent’s Electronic Measurements Group, Taiwan. “We are confident that Agilent’s complete testing solution will help all industrial customers meet quality and time-to-market product development requirements.”
The high speed (10Gbps) of data running on Thunderbolt buses requires the 33-GHz Agilent Infiniium 90000 X- Series oscilloscope, J-BERT N4903B high-performance serial BERT, E5071C 20GHz ENA, 81160A pulse/pattern generator and N5990A test automation software platform to carry out the high-performance testing.
The Agilent Infiniium oscilloscope used in the Thunderbolt test solution offers the world’s deepest acquisition memory and has the world’s first hardware/software integrated triggering system, InfiniiScan Plus. The Infiniium Series was designed to give engineers superior signal integrity, deep application analysis, and better insight into their designs.
About Granite River Labs
With lab locations in Santa Clara, Calif., and Taipei and Hsinchu in Taiwan, Granite River Labs provides a range of engineering services to help customers adopt high-speed connectivity technologies from the IC to system level, including compliance testing, debugging, characterization, signal/power integrity modeling and simulation, stress testing, benchmarking, and interoperability. Information about GRL is available at www.graniteriverlabs.com.
About Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is the world’s premier measurement company and a technology leader in chemical analysis, life sciences, electronics and communications. The company’s 18,700 employees serve customers in more than 100 countries. Agilent had net revenues of $6.6 billion in fiscal 2011. Information about Agilent is available at www.agilent.com.
