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News and New Products
High-performance MSOs feature 20-GHz analog bandwidth
By Dan Strassberg, Contributing Technical Editor -- EDN, 10/12/2009
Tektronix has announced the MSO70000 series of MSOs (mixed-signal oscilloscopes), which it calls the first high-performance, integrated MSOs. The instruments can capture as many as 20 channels of data—four analog with bandwidth ranging from 4 to 20 GHz, depending on the model, and 16 digital with timing resolution of 80 psec on all models. Memory depths to 250M points are available on all channels of all models. This introduction brings to 17 the number of MSO models the manufacturer offers—from the value-priced portable MSO2000 to the top-of-the-line 20-GHz-analog-bandwidth MSO72004.
The MSO70000 series combines the signal visibility and timing features of a high-performance logic analyzer with the analog precision, probing, and usability of a high-performance real-time oscilloscope, combining in one instrument a full suite of measurement capabilities that help resolve analog issues in digital systems. You can use the instruments to debug and verify in such demanding, high-speed design applications as DDR (double-data-rate) memory, high-performance ASICs, FPGAs, SOCs (systems on chips), and digital RF. The MSO70000 offers a variety of probing accessories for making minimally disruptive analog and digital connections to a DUT (device under test).
The instruments deliver advances in discovery of problems, capture of notable events, quick searches through long records to reveal the captured events, and analysis to obtain rapid insight into the causes of anomalous DUT behavior. The devices offer as much as five times the bandwidth and timing resolution of the fastest available integrated MSOs. Maximum sample rates are 50G samples/sec on analog channels and 12.5G samples/sec on digital channels. To minimize confusion, the analog- and digital-record durations always match; the scopes add repeated samples to the channels that are acquiring at the lower rate so that analog and digital records always contain equal numbers of samples. This feature allows you to capture long-duration events with high sample resolution and obtain time-correlated views of high-speed analog and digital data.
The MSO70000 series provides a comprehensive set of innovative solder-in probe accessories that simplify connecting to vias and fine-pitch components on tightly packed boards to acquire such signals as those on the digital-control lines of the DDR command bus. The tool set for DDR probing now also includes new BGA interposers for all variants of DDR3-and DDR2-memory components and provides access to all signals with excellent fidelity. The units work with the company’s iCapture technology, which allows internal routing of selected digital signals to the analog channels for full analog evaluation, making MSO70000 ideal for highly sensitive, fine-pitch board layouts.
The iCapture feature offers the unsurpassed versatility of analog views of any connected digital channel, providing debugging insight across all 20 channels. The series provides extensive triggering capabilities, including serial-pattern, mixed analog and digital, logic-pattern, and bus-state triggers, which you can combine to isolate system faults that occur only during particular system states. The units provide tight timing synchronization between the analog and the digital subsystems. Timing correlation as close as 80 psec is possible, resulting in easier determination of cause and effect of circuit behavior.
More than 30 analysis suites run on the MSO70000 series. You can select from the newly available I2C (inter-integrated-circuit) and SPI (serial-peripheral-interface) bus-analysis tools, DPOjet (digital-phosphor oscilloscope jet) for jitter and eye-diagram analysis, DDRA (DDR analysis) for DDR-memory-bus verification, SDLA (serial-data-link analysis) for equalized-channel emulation and analysis, and SignalVu for frequency-domain display and analysis. The manufacturer’s suggested US retail prices for the MSO70000 units start at $67,400.
