By increasing the signal-acquisition processing power and upgrading the sampling architecture, Tektronix has produced the DPO7000 series of oscilloscopes that greatly reduce the acquisition dead-time and provide, according to the company, much more of an "analogue-like" display to allow more comprehensive fault and glitch detection. DPO stands for digital phosphor oscilloscope, and the unit is also categorised as a real-time digital scope. It ends, Tek says, compromises between sample rate, record length and waveform-capture rate. Real-time bandwidths in the series range from 500 MHz to 2.5 GHz. Basic sampling rate is 10 Gsamples/sec, that can be interleaved up to 40 Gsamples/sec on one channel. Record lengths are 200M or 400M points, and the new signal-imaging system allows capture rates of over 250,000 waveforms/sec. Exploiting that feature, switching the scope to DPO mode invokes an infinite-persistence display in which software maps repetitions at the same pixel point on the waveform to display colour (or intensity if preferred). It will display even a single occurrence of a glitch, and will show many repetitions of a correct signal as graded colour. Having spotted a glitch, you can use the Pinpoint triggering system to set its parameters and capture it in DSO mode. Pinpoint includes real-time triggering on serial data patterns at up to 1.25 Gbit/sec, and 200 psec glitch triggering. The format of the instrument is the increasingly popular "notebook"-size TFT display: this one is a 12.1-in. XGA screen. The instrument is Windows XP-based. Pricing ranges from €12,600 to 23,300.

Tektronix, www.tektronix.com.