Latest news from Teledyne Lecroy Xena

1. What happened to Valkryie?

Last September we announced “end of sale” for 3 product lines – Vulcan, Vantage and Safire (see details here) – to better focus on our core business which is Layer 2-3 Ethernet traffic generators, Physical Layer testing, and Network Emulation.

We were subsequently acquired by Teledyne LeCroy which meant renaming all our remaining products to match their naming protocol. As part of that process, we chose to replace the name “Valkyrie” with “Xena”. This means “ValkyrieManager” became (once again) “XenaManager”, “Valkyrie2544” became “Xena2544” and so on.

However, we continue to use the names of Nordic gods for our traffic generators based on the top Ethernet speeds they support – Z10 Odin, Z100 Loki, Z400 Thor and Z800 Freya – and our network emulator is now called E100 Chimera.

You can find a full list of all the name changes here.

2. Should I upgrade to Release 96.1?

Here are 4 great reasons why you should download our latest SW release:

• Z10sx Odin
  Release 96.1 supports our exciting new Z10sx Odin traffic generator (previously called Odin-10G-6S-6P). The special feature of this 6-port test module is it can test 4 different speeds simultaneously – 1G, 2.5G, 5G & 10G – and this capability will soon be extended to include 10Mbps & 100Mbps!
• Z400q Thor
  Upgrading to Release 96.1 means the I2C RX/TX transceiver access speed of Z400q Thor traffic generators (previously Thor-400G-7S-1P) can now be configured up to a maximum of 800KHz.
• Streamlined Tx Taps Configuration
  We’ve also improved the usability of the advanced Tx Taps Configuration and Monitoring feature by providing a single port overview and control of all SerDes lanes and their taps settings, thereby allowing easy up/down toggling of the different values.
• All Chimera impairment statistics now reported in XenaManager
  Another big usability improvement in Release 96.1 is all the impairment statistics from Xena’s E100 Chimera network emulators are now incorporated into XenaManager’s reports and charts. This includes frame drops, mis-ordering, duplication, and corruption.
  Click here to learn about all the new features and bug fixes in Release 96.1.

Download Release 96.1

3. What’s the status on Freya and 800Gbps / 112G SerDes testing?

Glad you asked! Z800 Freya is not yet part of the main Xena SW release, but this award-winning product is powering ahead with new features incl.:

• 1 x 800G single stream traffic generation
• Various AN/LT test extensions
• Virtual lane mapping
• Single lane overview with toggle options
• PHY autotune option
• Negotiation of pre-coding setting
• plus more to come

If you are considering upgrading from 56G to 112G SerDes, contact your local Xena sales representative to hear more about Z800 Freya.

4. Any new webinars?
You can sign up now for our third 112G SerDes masterclass webinar on February 20. This time we’re teaming up with Synopsys and will show you four demonstrations involving Auto-Negotiation & Link Training (AN/LT)
Sign up for webinar
If you work with implementing 5G & O-RAN and want to learn, check out this recent 30-minute webinar on how network emulation can help test performances and interoperability. Your hosts will be Roberto Kompany, the Principal Analyst at Omdia, and Xena’s Technical Marketing Director, Martin Qvist Olsen.
Watch the on-demand webinar

5. What about new White Papers or Case Studies?
You can learn how to test Smart NICs using Xena traffic generators in this brand-new White Paper.
Read the white paper

There is also a case study on how a Chinese high-tech startup uses E100q Chimera to verify the performance of a new ASIC for SmartNICs destined for use in large data centers. Read this Case Study. 

Another case study explains how Parallel Wireless used E100 Chimera to greatly reduce the time and cost of deploying a 5G ORAN network by emulating the impairment caused by different cable lengths in the lab.

6. Are you attending industry events in my region?

Last week the Xena sales team was on the Teledyne LeCroy stand at DesignCon 24 in Santa Clara, CA. If you missed us there, you will find us at:
– MWC (Barcelona, Spain) at the end of February – we will be on the O RAN Alliance Booth with the E100 Chimera network emulator
– OFC (San Diego, CA) in March – we will be on the Ethernet Alliance stand demonstrating Z800 Freya.

If you have any other questions for us, please let us know.