Five major trends in the development of the oscilloscope industry

Trend 1: From Parallel Measurements to Serial Measurements

Past embedded designs often used a parallel architecture, which meant that each bus component had its own path. Therefore, as long as you can use patterns or state triggers to find out the events of interest, you can visually decode the data on the bus.

However, modern embedded designs typically employ a serial architecture that continuously transmits bus data. The reason for this is that it requires less board space, lower cost, and uses embedded clocks with lower power requirements. Figure 1 shows the CAN data stream. In addition to the embedded clock, the CAN information also includes the start of the frame identifier, address, data length code, data, CRC, and frame identifier end. Analyzing and triggering such serial data is often much more difficult than parallel data.

Therefore, oscilloscope manufacturers currently offer a variety of serial data triggering capabilities, search features, and protocol watchers to help you identify and decode events and measure them. For example, the Agilent Infiniium 90000A Series oscilloscopes have a serial data analysis software package that supports a number of protocols including CAN, LIN, I2C, SPI, Flexray, SAS, SATA, XAUI, Fibre Channel, DVI/HDMI, Infiniband, and PCI-Express (1.1 and 2.0).

As such agreements continue to emerge and new-generation protocols enter the market, oscilloscope vendors must keep pace with the development of new technologies so that users can effectively use these protocols to work.

Trend 2: Mixed Signal Oscilloscope

The Mixed Signal Oscilloscope (MSO) was first introduced by HP/Agilent Technologies more than a decade ago. It is a comprehensive test instrument with the availability of an oscilloscope, the logic analyzer's measurement capabilities, and some serial protocol analysis capabilities. On the MSO's display, you can view a variety of time-aligned analog and digital waveforms. Although the MSO fails to provide all the channels that the logic analyzer can provide (MSO usually has 2~4 analog inputs and about 16 digital inputs), its use can completely make up for this. Logic analyzers are too complex to use, and oscilloscopes are simpler. This is where MSO's strengths gather the strengths of various test equipment and find a perfect balance between them.

The MSO was created for the embedded embedded mixed-signal system that is popular in the current technology. For example, automotive electronics systems often have digitally controlled analog motor controllers and sensors. In the past, people usually chose traditional oscilloscopes to analyze such systems, but oscilloscopes often do not have enough trigger capability and input channels. Therefore, people must also use logic analyzers, which results in more complicated setup and operation.

The MSO completely solves this problem and is proven to be the best instrument for analyzing embedded mixed-signal systems.

Trend 3: Powerful Portable Oscilloscope/Customized Universal Oscilloscope

In the past, high-performance oscilloscopes were bulky, and portable oscilloscopes had lower performance, and users could only have one. Modern high-speed design and serial data make many people urgently need a portable high-performance oscilloscope. Agilent's InfiniiVision 7000 Series oscilloscopes were created at the right time. Although it was small (6.5 inches deep and weighs 13 pounds), it had MegaZoom III deep memory, an update rate of 100,000 waveforms per second, and hardware-accelerated serial triggering and decoding.

This allows you to have a high-performance oscilloscope with great portability.

Currently, people are increasingly using the software packages provided in many similar oscilloscopes to customize their general oscilloscopes.

Some software applications, such as various serial decoding software packages, vector signal analysis (VSA) software, power application software, and offline viewing and analysis software, allow users to customize and use their general-purpose oscilloscopes in a very personal way.

Trend 4: Oscilloscopes are becoming more of an automated verification tool than debugging tools

In the past, engineers or technicians mainly used oscilloscopes for debugging and design work, such as diagnosing faulty electrical components. Now, although oscilloscopes still have this effect, it is increasingly common for automated verification to check whether the device meets the specifications of a serial data standard.

In the field of conformance, each device that employs a serial data bus technology must meet predetermined technical specifications in order to ensure that the various devices manufactured by various manufacturers are compatible with each other.

With the advent of second- and third-generation standards, the data rate of the device is getting higher and higher, the requirements for the oscilloscope's signal integrity and eye pattern analysis performance are also increasing, and the oscilloscope is required to minimize the amount of Measure the impact of the system because these effects can be very severe at high data rate conditions. In addition, the industry has also developed a consistent application for automated testing of devices. For example, Agilent provides consistent applications for a variety of consistent applications, including DDR (1, 2, and 3), DVI, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, Fully Buffered DIMMs, HDMI, USB, Wireless USB, PCI Express, SATAI/II , XAUI, and so on.

Trend 5: Better Monitors

Users now need better displays for many reasons. First, with the development of society, people are increasingly accustomed to using large-size, high-definition displays. Not long ago, it was common to use a small computer monitor or TV screen. Today, large LCD and plasma displays are flooded with electronic store shelves. These everyday-use devices are equipped with high-performance displays. Naturally, people want other display devices to have such displays. Therefore, many oscilloscope manufacturers have started production of oscilloscopes equipped with large-size high-resolution displays. For example, the Agilent Infiniium 90000A Series oscilloscopes come with a 12.1-inch XGA high-resolution display.

The second reason is that people now need to display more signals on the oscilloscope at the same time, including analog data signals and digital data signals, so the oscilloscope must be equipped with a large enough display to correctly display all waveforms. In addition, the display must also have a sufficiently high resolution and color so that the user clearly distinguishes each waveform and reads the decoded signature. Agilent's InfiniiVision 7000 Series oscilloscopes feature a 12.1-inch XGA display with 256-level brightness and are portable oscilloscopes that provide excellent display quality.

Oscilloscopes are primarily used to test and develop modern technologies and therefore must be very flexible to adapt to new application environments. The main uses of oscilloscopes are constantly changing. For oscilloscope suppliers to make users satisfied and efficient to complete their work, they must continue to introduce new products to adapt to this development.