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High-Speed PCIe Gen 5 Compliance Testing

02 October 2023 – Advantest announced that its MPT3000 solid-state drive (SSD) test system has become the world’s first SSD production tester to be certified by PCI-SIG for high-speed compliance testing of PCI Express (PCIe) fifth-generation (Gen 5 or 5.0) devices. Advantest completed the rigorous testing process and was awarded certification in August 2023.

Previously approved for PCIe 4.0 compliance testing, the MPT3000 is now also approved for official PCIe 5.0 compliance and certification testing. The PCIe 5.0 certification was awarded specifically to two key products in the MPT3000 family: the MPT3000ES3 for engineering and the MPT3000HVM3 for high-volume manufacturing.

“Advantest has continually driven industry-leading advancements, enabling the MPT3000 to address SSD test requirements associated with PCIe 5.0, including NVMe devices and those utilizing the Compute Express Link, or CXL, interconnect standard,” said Indira Joshi, VP of Advantest’s MPT3000 product line. “This certification is further evidence of our commitment to meeting customers’ demands for a proven, reliable high-speed PCIe-compliant test solution.”

PCI-SIG compliance testing ensures not only adherence to the PCIe standard but also product interoperability, providing integrators with the confidence to adopt certified products for their application needs. Only equipment that has passed the PCI-SIG’s intensive series of compliance tests – including electrical, protocol and interoperability tests – can be included in the PCI-SIG’s official Integrators List.

Since its introduction in 2014, the MPT3000 has become the de facto industry standard for SSD test, with a broad installed base of customers that includes integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), fabless chipmakers, and outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) providers. Combining Advantest's expertise in high-speed system-on-chip (SoC) testing with state-of-the-art electronics architecture, the MPT3000 features multi-protocol capability and high parallelism to enable full performance testing of a range of SSD form factors.

As SSDs increase in speed, thermal management becomes a bigger challenge. The most recent additions to the MPT3000’s capabilities, announced in early August 2023, are the Independent Thermal Control (ITC) device interface boards (DIBs) and Engineering Thermal Chamber (ETC). These new thermal control products were developed to manage higher-wattage PCIe Gen 5 devices and are compatible with all SSD form factors tested on the MPT3000ES3 and MPT3000HVM3 systems, enabling manufacturers to accelerate testing within actively controlled thermal environments.

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