News and New Products

Upgradable scopes capture 1G-sample records on all channels simultaneously

By Dan Strassberg, Contributing Technical Editor -- EDN, 2/1/2008

Agilent Technologies has announced a series of high-performance real-time-sampling DSOs (digital-storage oscilloscopes) that you can purchase with or upgrade to a waveform-memory depth of 1G samples on each of four channels. This record length is five times as great as that available in the deepest-memory competitive scope. The Infiniium 90000A Series also offers what the manufacturer calls the first integrated hardware/software-triggering system and the only three-level triggering system. InfiniiScan Plus, which identifies 150-psec hardware events, 75-psec software events, and 250-psec glitches, combines multiple hardware triggers with InfiniiScan software to provide virtually infinite trigger combinations for any debugging situation.

At the maximum acquisition rate of 40G samples/sec, which applies on all samples simultaneously, the new DSOs’ optional ultradeep memory captures a 25-msec-duration record on each channel. Proprietary data-accelerator technology enables the industry’s fastest data offload, allowing rapid access to offline analysis. The new scope platform also provides Agilent’s recognized ultralow timebase jitter and input noise. (For example, thanks to the company’s RF-design expertise, proprietary-packaging technologies, and unique CMOS-ADC architecture, the 2.5-GHz-bandwidth unit offers a 147 μV-rms noise floor at 5-mV/division sensitivity.) Both the DSO and DSA (digital-signal analyzer) models can perform more than 150,000 measurements/sec and offer modes that support more than 300,000 triggers/sec.

The 90000A series includes 2.5-, 4-, 6-, 8-, 12-, and 13-GHz-bandwidth models with memory depths of 10M, 20M, 50M, 100M, 200M, 500M, and 1G samples/channel. Upgradable memory depth and the industry’s only upgradable real-time-oscilloscope bandwidth and oscilloscope-application-server licensing protect your investment. What’s more, if you buy a lower performance model and later upgrade it, your total cost will be the same as if you had initially purchased the higher performance; in other words, there is no penalty for waiting until you need it to purchase higher bandwidth. Agilent even changes the model-number labeling to match the upgraded performance. US prices for the series start at $29,000 and extend to $151,500 for the widest-bandwidth unit with the maximum possible memory.