Test Data Out (TDO)

QPI Is Cool (Part II)

For those of us who are working with the new Intel® QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) high speed bus, there is a new book on the market that will enhance your understanding as well as become the “Bible” for high speed buses. The name of the book is “Mastering High Performance Multiprocessor Signaling” by Dave Coleman and Michael Mirmak. ASSET’s ScanWorks® tools were referenced as one of the validation measurement tools for gathering data on receiver margining specification. Here are the book details...

What is IEEE 1687?

Hello, and welcome—this is the first of a set of short blogs on the topic of 1687. Since 1687 is still in the proposal stage, it is actually referred to as P1687 right now, but the “P” will disappear after the standard is ratified and it is no longer a “proposal”. We are nearing the point where the committee is going to submit the draft of the standard for the ratification process, and there is a lot more interest being generated by early adopters, so there is a need for some explanation, understanding, and analysis concerning the costs, efficiencies, configurations and implementations of 1687 (also referred to as IJTAG, where the “I” means “internal”). This first blog answers the question, “what is IEEE 1687”, and subsequent blogs will cover the topics “who uses IEEE 1687”, “what are the advantages of using IEEE 1687 (why use IEEE 1687)”, and “how to use IEEE 1687.”

Debugging watchdog timeouts

Watchdog timeouts occur in crashed or hung systems when the main processor on a printed circuit board no longer sends a heartbeat to an ancillary service processor. The service processor watchdog then, after the timeout period, re-initializes the main system to try to restore it to an operational state. Watchdog timeouts can occur in high- and low-end systems, anywhere from routers to servers to cell phones. Debugging these can be difficult…

Intel® Xeon® Processor 7500 Series (codenamed Nehalem-EX)

The new Intel® Xeon® Processor 7500 Series (codenamed Nehalem-EX) is truly a leap forward for Intel server technology and forms the foundation for high-end clusters and supercomputers for years to come. Capable of scaling up to 256 processors and supporting 16 terabytes of memory, it will be used in high-performance “super nodes” running bandwidth-demanding applications like financial analysis, numerical weather predictions and genome sequencing. In short, this Intel platform rocks. The diagram below shows the new architecture, which is explained in our free whitepaper...