Click on the advert above to visit the company web site

Product category: Electrical and Electronic Testing and PAT Equipment
News Release from: Tektronix | Subject: TDS7000 oscilloscope
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial Team on 05 June 2000

It's the world's fastest real-time
oscilloscope

Tektronix has announced groundbreaking 4-Gigahertz real-time performance in a new family of digital phosphor oscilloscopes (DPOs).

Tektronix has announced groundbreaking 4-Gigahertz (GHz) real-time performance in a new family of digital phosphor oscilloscopes (DPOs) The TDS7000 Series leads the industry in addressing the critical measurement needs of engineers who design next-generation global communications and Internet products

Escalating signal speeds and ever-accelerating time-to-market pressures challenge the engineer to do more in less time.

Tektronix consistently provides award-winning test and measurement solutions that keep pace with these explosive demands of the electronics industry.

The TDS7000 Series introduced today is a new generation of Tektronix' revolutionary class of DPO.

Based on a new, open Windows platform, the innovative TDS7000 family combines exceptional performance, including up to 20-Gigasamples per second (GS/s) real-time sample rate, record length to 32 Megabytes (MB) (option 4M) and up to 4-GHz bandwidth, with operational simplicity and unmatched connectivity.

"Our global customers in semiconductor, computer and communications markets constantly challenge Tektronix to stay ahead of their most advanced design and measurement needs with new levels of instrumentation performance", said David Churchill, vice president, Instrumentation Business Unit, Tektronix, Inc.

"Tektronix continually invests in new platforms to enable engineers to realise next-generation designs." "The TDS7000 Series utilizes new technology to reinforce Tektronix' leadership in oscilloscope instrumentation, providing leading-edge performance for customers' key signal integrity challenges." The TDS7404, the flagship of this DPO family, employs silicon germanium (SiGe), a semiconductor technology developed by IBM Corp.

(NYSE: IBM), to deliver unmatched performance in signal acquisition.

Tektronix' TDS7404 provides accurate performance at significantly increased speeds over standard silicon at similar power levels.

Furthermore, the high levels of integration possible with SiGe give the TDS7404 a robust, full-featured front-end with excellent signal integrity.

In addition, this leading-edge instrument maintains the low noise floor of previous amplifier designs, while substantially increasing the bandwidth.

Although SiGe is growing in popularity as a semiconductor process, Tektronix is the first test and measurement adopter of this cutting-edge technology.

Over the last four years, Tektronix has invested more than $14 million to fuel SiGe development for use in DPOs and a broad range of future Tektronix instrumentation applications.

Fundamentally different from other oscilloscopes, the DPO architecture dedicates unique ASIC hardware to acquire signal data.

DPOs give design engineers an unmatched ability to view signals and circuit behaviour.

Pioneered by Tektronix, the first DPO was introduced in June 1998 as a new approach to signal acquisition.

The TDS7000 family's industry-leading signal capture rate of 500,000 waveforms per second (w/s) - more than double the previously available 200,000 w/s - provides insight into signal behaviour never before seen in digital oscilloscope instrumentation.

This insight dramatically increases the probability that designers will witness transient signal integrity problems that occur in digital systems, such as jitter, runt pulses, glitches and transition errors.

Though today's trigger systems may already detect such anomalies, to succeed, engineers need to quickly determine where to look and how to classify the type of fault present.

DPOs speed this process by showing the engineer millions of waveforms in just seconds, while also providing analysis capabilities that translate the waveform data into useful information at the touch of a button or the click of a mouse.

"With capture rates up to 500,000 w/s, the TDS7000 Series gives engineers the confidence that they are seeing a world of signal detail that other oscilloscopes truly cannot provide", added Churchill.

The intuitive TDS7000 Series user interface is easy to learn and easy to use, so the user can "drive" this oscilloscope according to personal preference.

Classic analogue-style controls exist for those who like the right-side control panel.

A large, 10.4-inch touch-sensitive display offers immediate access to the instruments' capabilities.

This touch screen is especially helpful when a cluttered space or cart makes mouse control a challenge.

In addition, a Universal Serial Bus port enables a keyboard or mouse to be 'hot connected' at any time for direct control.

Regardless of operating mode, highly graphical control windows allow the user to quickly access and apply sophisticated features.

In addition, context-sensitive help instantly provides information about the user's current area of operation, removing uncertainty about terminology or the need to search long lists of topics.

Unrestricted access to Windows-compatible software and hardware, coupled with network connectivity, makes the TDS7000 Series an integral part of the larger design community.

Open Windows allows the engineer to customise the oscilloscope with any Windows-compatible software package without special assistance or integration by Tektronix.

For example, the engineer can launch WordPad from the Windows start menu and develop documentation by simply copying and pasting the active screen images into a document.

This concurrent approach reduces the risk of error and greatly simplifies the tasks of detailing and communicating measurement results.

Standard interfaces allow expansion of the TDS7000 Series to include peripherals such as storage devices, a modem, or a wireless LAN connection.

Once networked, users can share files, access print resources, surf the Web for vendor information such as data sheets, and exchange e-mail directly from the oscilloscope.

And, using the dual-monitor mode supported by Windows, designers can refer to and exchange this critical information while simultaneously making measurements on the TDS7000 Series.

"The TDS7000 Series represents a tremendous step forward for Tektronix' customers.

Features such as breakthrough performance, operational simplicity and network connectivity deliver sophisticated test advantages for design engineers, and signify a major advance in the test equipment evolution", added David Churchill.

"This product will define new ways in which our customers work at their benches, in their labs and with their counterparts around the globe.

This complete access, provided by the open Windows environment, will pave the way for future innovative oscilloscope features from Tektronix." To give engineers complete access to the TDS7404's breakthrough performance, Tektronix developed the industry's fastest single-ended and differential probing solutions for connection to the device under test.

The P7240 4-GHz active probe with 120-picosecond (ps) rise time is the highest bandwidth single-ended probe on the market today.

It features the new TekConnect interface, which preserves signal integrity to 10-GHz and beyond to meet present and future bandwidth needs.

This probe is ideal for high-speed acquisition in computer systems, datacomm applications and a broad range of low-voltage logic designs.

The P7330 probe with TekConnect interface offers 3-GHz bandwidth, making it the world's highest performance differential probe.

Its compact form factor, extremely high bandwidth and low noise performance also make this probe ideal for the increasingly common differential signals found in applications ranging from high-speed computer systems to communications technologies.

The TDS7000 Series includes many standard and optional analysis features.

Application-specific measurements, such as Tektronix' enhanced Java-based measurement packages, TDSJIT2 and TDSDDM2, can be added to create focused tools.

TDSJIT2 enables jitter measurements to be taken on contiguous clock cycles from single-shot measurements.

The TDS7404's hardware precision and software techniques provide less than 1.5-ps root mean square (RMS) repeatability in jitter measurements.

TDSDDM2, a disk drive measurement package, adapts the instrument for disk drive design analysis.

The instrument's performance, 3-GHz differential probing solution, and TDSDDM2 combine to create a highly effective analyser.

TDSDDM2 provides basic characterisation measurements such as TAA and PW50, and advanced measurements including NLTS and SNR.

Other analysis features include a powerful new math system that allows engineers to create sophisticated algebraic expressions using a simple engineering-style calculator approach.

Signals, measurement results, and other expressions can be used to create new analysis capabilities.

Frequency-domain analysis is controlled in terms familiar to spectrum analyser users, such as centre frequency, span and resolution bandwidth.

This frees the engineer from the idiosyncrasies of the FFT (Fast Fourier Transforms) algorithm typically presented in oscilloscopes and provides greater confidence in the analysis.

Price and Availability: The TDS7000 Series oscilloscopes range in price from $18,000 to $60,000 ($US).

The TDS7054 and TDS7104 became available for order beginning June 1, 2000 with a four-week delivery.

The TDS7404 was due to be delivered in calendar year 2000. Request a free brochure from Tektronix ...

• Tektronix: contact details and other news
• Email this article to a colleague
• Register for the free Engineeringtalk email newsletter
• Engineeringtalk Home Page

Search the Pro-Talk network of sites

Put your news on Engineeringtalk  |   Advertise  |   Get the free Engineeringtalk newsletter  |   Engineeringtalk Home
About Engineeringtalk  |   Copyright © 2000-2008 Pro-Talk Ltd, UK