Most lab managers have a large bin of expensive cables in an ‘unknown’ state, put to one side while debugging connection issues.  The loss of time in trying to debug link issues is an even greater cost.

Modern SAS and PCIe cables come in a range of speed grades and have active EEPROMS which communicate their capabilities to the host system.  Research from Quarch has shown that various cables on the market today are not programmed according to the standard, which may cause compatibility problems:

Quarch now offers a way to preemptively screen or debug cables before use.  In addition to EEPROM analysis, the tester performs link training, lane mapping, BERT (Bit Error Rate Tests) and synthetic eye diagram capture.  Everything you need to be sure that the cable will work well in practice.

“We’ve seen cables with poor signal integrity, cables with lanes swapped over and cables that report invalid rated speeds; and that’s just in our own small test lab” says Andy Norrie, Director at Quarch Technology

Supporting SAS and PCIe cables up to Gen4, the Cable Tester’s features make it perfect for:

●       Comprehensive quality and functionality checks on new cable batches.

●       Quickly isolating - or ruling out - connection issues.

●       Generating reports that can be archived for quality control purposes.

With simple automatic testing and a range of advanced features on its companion software, Cable Test Studio, our cable tester has become an indispensable lab tool.

PCIe 4.0 / SAS 4.0 Cable Tester is available now, and can be evaluated before purchase. For more information visit or watch it in action here