A hardware emulation of the CMS pixel detector phase 1 upgrade front-end electronics has been developed to test and validate the architecture of the back-end electronics (FED) firmware. The emulation is implemented on a Virtex 6 FPGA on the CERN GLIB uTCA platform, utilizing an 8-way SFP FPGA Mezzanine Card to drive compatible optical transmitters to the back-end electronics at \mbox{400 Mbps}. The firmware emulates the complex functions of the phase 1 pixel readout chips (PSI46digv2 and PROC600) and token bit manager ASICs and allows for possible abnormalities that can occur in the output data stream. The emulation implements both fixed data patterns that are used as test vectors and realistic simulated data to drive the readout of the FED at the expected data and trigger rates. Testing software was developed to control the emulator and verify correct transmission of data and exception handling in the FED. An installation has been integrated into the pixel DAQ test system at CMS to be used for fast validation of FED firmware upgrades.