Catalyst Introduces 6Gb/s Host and Device Emulators for SAS and SATA Protocols

Sunnyvale, CA, May 18, 2007 - Catalyst Enterprises, Inc., a leading manufacturer of advanced design verification and test tools for Serial ATA (SATA), Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), USB 2.0, PCI Express and other high-performance communications technologies, has introduced the industry's only 6Gb/s traffic generators for SAS and SATA protocols. These emulators, which are designed to run on the STX-460 platform from Catalyst, enable developers to generate valid and invalid traffic at 6Gb/s speeds.

"Since 6Gb/s SAS and SATA initiator and target products will not be commercially available for at least 18 months, emulators will be crucial to developers who need to validate their designs within a simulated data storage system," said Mark Adams, Catalyst Product Manager for Data Storage Protocol Testers. "The STX-460 platform from Catalyst is the only test system that is capable of emulating either an initiator or a target on a 6Gb/s SAS or SATA link."

With the STX emulators, high-level commands can be easily defined and sent to initiator or target devices through a series of convenient pull-down menus. All traffic on the bus, including traffic generated by the STX and returned traffic from the device under test, is captured and displayed in the intuitive Catalyst trace format. Looping, iteration, and a wealth of conditional statements provide for precise control of the emulator scripting routines.

The initiator emulator can be operated at the command, frame and primitive levels. The emulator automatically performs CRC generation, 8b/10b encoding, and data scrambling. Link layer protocol exchanges, handshaking, OOB sequencing, and retry conditions are handled automatically, but can also be manipulated to create various error scenarios. The device emulator can be configured to exhibit normal and abnormal behavior, allowing for error handling routines to be tested.

The STX-460 also comes with SAS/SATA or SATA-only analyzer software. This application includes the advanced triggering capabilities that allow users to quickly find and resolve intermittent errors. These triggering options allow STX-460 users to set up to 23 levels of states for isolating error conditions. Each STX-460 has four ports for connecting to host and target devices, and eight systems can be cascaded together to provide up to 32 ports of simultaneous connections. The STX-460 displays captured data in a variety of user-selected formats, including a hierarchical view and chronological views. Search and reporting tools provide easy navigation of large trace files. All Catalyst SAS and SATA protocol analyzers and exercisers enable both storage system and component developers to locate errors and verify a solution quickly and accurately.

About Catalyst Enterprises, Inc.
Founded in 1992 in San Jose, Calif., Catalyst manufactures data bus analysis and emulation tools for Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), Serial ATA (SATA), PCI Express, USB 2.0 and Wireless USB. Catalyst’s development tools incorporate a reconfigurable hardware core architecture, which can be updated in the field, keeping the tool current with the latest standards and updated feature sets. Catalyst products are used by companies in the data storage, telecommunications, semiconductor, software, consumer electronics, defense, and other industries. Catalyst is a wholly owned subsidiary of LeCroy Corporation (LCRY). Catalyst can be found on the web at www.getcatalyst.com.