Every hour of delayed semiconductor hardware and system validation can cost thousands in lost productivity, missed deadlines, and cascading supply chain disruptions. Yet across the industry, from chip design to production, teams still rely on fragmented tools, manual diagnostics, and custom scripts just to bring up a device or flash firmware. Hardware engineers struggle with relentless signal integrity, power, and interconnect issues, while electrical and system validation teams battle overwhelming misconfigured links, sprawling telemetry, and persistent, unpredictable multi-board failures. These inefficiencies slow down time-to-market and increase the risk of data corruption, misconfigured links, and firmware mismatches. In high-stakes environments like hyperscale data centers and rack-scale manufacturing facilities, these inefficiencies aren’t just inconvenient, they’re costly, risky, and unsustainable.
COSMOS Tools were built to solve these challenges. They are cross platform tools that give engineers instant access to management, monitoring, diagnostics and more, without needing to write a single line of code. Running seamlessly across lab setups and production environments, the COSMOS Tools bridge the gap between low level hardware and high-level automation, enabling engineers to accelerate hardware bring-up, validate systems efficiently and streamline prototyping and integration workflows. Whether tuning a retimer link in the lab or integrating capabilities into production orchestration flows, COSMOS Tools streamline validation by addressing fragmented code, incompatible modules, and decentralized workflows, transforming a process that was once error-prone and inconsistent into a scalable, reliable system. COSMOS Tools speed up hardware validation and make it more reliable and automation friendly. Together with the COSMOS Developer Kit, they fit into every step of the hardware journey – helping design, hardware, test, manufacturing, and field teams work smarter and faster, in the following ways:
- During hardware bring-up, COSMOS Tools may be used to perform repeatable tasks like firmware flashing, link validation, and telemetry monitoring – ensuring systems are initialized quickly and reliably.
- For system validation, COSMOS Tools provides an intuitive graphical interface for discovering devices, configuring systems, visualizing topologies, analyzing logs, replicating issues, and debugging hardware in real time. This reduces complexity, orchestrates sub-routines, and accelerates onboarding for new teams and partners.
- In manufacturing, COSMOS Tools may be used to quickly troubleshoot issues and enable automation workflows, helping teams standardize processes and improve throughput.
- In the field, COSMOS Tools may be used for replicating issues, collecting logs, and streamlining debugging and reporting issues to technical support teams, resolving issues efficiently.
COSMOS CLI provides full functionality on its own and COSMOS Explorer complements it with an intuitive graphical user interface (UI). COSMOS CLI delivers precision and scalability, while COSMOS Explorer enhances usability and visibility, empowering teams across multiple engineering disciplines to manage, monitor, debug, and validate hardware efficiently.
Simplified Hardware Validation and Diagnostics
COSMOS Tools empower engineers to streamline device bring-up and troubleshooting by reducing workflow complexity and providing clearer visibility into system behavior, with the following benefits.
Ready-to-Use Validation Workflows with COSMOS CLI
- Task-specific command-line utilities
Access a rich set of features for device discovery, as shown in Figure 1 below, link monitoring, PRBS testing, LTSSM trace capture, as shown in Figure 2 below, firmware flashing, and more. - Cross-platform support
Run consistent workflows across architectures, including x86 64-bit and ARM 32/64-bit on Linux, as well as x86 64-bit on Windows. - Standardized, automation-friendly workflows
Quickly retrieve device information, link health, port telemetry, and firmware logs using repetitive commands that integrate seamlessly into automation pipelines. - Accelerated validation and system reliability
Streamline bring-up, stress testing, and multi-device management to shorten validation cycles and ensure consistent performance across diverse hardware topologies.
Figure 1: Device Information for Aries Smart Retimer
Figure 2: LTSSM Trace of Scorpio Smart Fabric Switch
Interactive Visualization and Exploration with COSMOS Explorer
- Discover complex systems visually
Automatically discover CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, memory, NICs, HBAs, FPGAs, retimers, and switches in a live system topology. - Interact with devices in with just a few clicks
Navigate through devices to review link status, speed, and width, or dive deeper with built-in analysis tools like LTSSM trace, Internal Logic Analyzer (ILA), and PAM4/NRZ eye diagrams. - Accelerate bring-up and troubleshooting
Guided workflows make it easy to map interconnections, identify anomalies, and validate configurations – reducing time spent on manual debugging. - Accessible for all engineers
With intuitive navigation and visual workflows, even new users gain deep system insights quickly, helping teams resolve performance issues before production. Below we can visualize how to configure PRBS in Figure 3, and eye diagrams in Figure 4.
Figure 3: PRBS Configuration on COSMOS Explorer
Figure 4: PAM4 Eye Diagram with COSMOS Explorer
Leading hyperscalers are already leveraging COSMOS Tools to accelerate bring-up, streamline validation, and unify diagnostics across the entire hardware lifecycle. By integrating COSMOS CLI and Explorer into their existing workflows, these teams have eliminated manual inefficiencies, improved visibility, and achieved faster, more reliable system validation. To learn how COSMOS Tools can transform your validation and automation processes, contact your Astera Labs representative today.