Real-Time Display Update Rate, Up to 40 Times Faster Than Competing Models, Now Shows Critical Events in Complex Waveforms

PALO ALTO, Calif.—Agilent Technologies Inc. introduces four 100 MHz portable digital storage and mixed-signal oscilloscopes (DSOs/MSOs) with the highest performance capabilities in the industry. With a real-time sample rate of 2 GSa/s on each channel and display update rate up to 40 times faster than competing models, the Agilent 6000 Series can now show critical events in complex waveforms, dramatically reducing design verification and debug time.

These additions to the 6000 Series also provide the industry with its first 4+16-channel MSO in the 100 MHz segment. These oscilloscopes feature industry-leading waveform viewing and measurement insight for 8- and 16-bit embedded system designers in the aerospace/defense, automotive, communications and consumer electronics industries.

Exceptional waveform viewing is achieved with Agilent’s MegaZoom III display technology. MegaZoom III provides users with real-time, high-resolution XGA waveform viewing (1024 x 768 pixels) with 256 levels of color-intensity grades and memory depth up to a full 8 Meg points -- 800 times more than competing models. The dynamic range in the Z-axis provides the highest waveform-display quality of any other portable oscilloscopes on the market today.

Engineers face design problems that are increasingly digital in nature -- more and faster signals, wider time spans and serial triggering. Agilent’s portable 6000 series oscilloscopes provide the performance needed to address these measurement challenges. They are optimized for waveform update rates and display resolution, plus have the ability to add 16 logic-timing channels, significantly reducing debugging time.

"The new 100 MHz models bring industry-leading performance technology to those working on MCU- and FPGA-based designs at a price that fits their budget," said Dan Oldfield, R&D manager at Agilent’s Design Validation Division. "Customers designing products based on 8- and 16-bit MCUs and FPGAs will now be able to get the exceptional performance of the 6000 Series oscilloscopes previously available only in the higher-performance, more expensive oscilloscope models. With MegaZoom III, users now have a scope that can trigger, capture and display the critical events in complex signals inside their systems."

As the complexity of embedded systems increases, hardware developers often need to isolate events of interest or view critical relationships on more than the limited number of channels available in traditional oscilloscopes. MSOs provide the seamless integration of scope and logic-timing channels for time-aligned viewing and triggering across any or all input channels. Now, for the first time, customers can order either a 2+16 or 4+16 channel MSO for their 100 MHz applications. Those who order a DSO 6000 Series can easily upgrade to an MSO configuration later.

Additionally, Agilent’s FPGA dynamic probe, introduced for Agilent logic analyzers in 2004, is fully supported by the MSO versions of the Agilent 6000 oscilloscopes. With the addition of the FPGA dynamic probe, embedded systems developers using Xilinx FPGAs in their hardware digital designs have the ability to see inside their FPGA and correlate this internal view with events on their system with the MSO’s scope and logic channels.

All Agilent 6000 Series oscilloscopes come standard with LAN, GPIB and USB interfaces as well as an additional front-panel USB port to replace limited-capacity floppy drives. The front-panel USB port lets designers easily store memory records, screen images and settings on standard higher-speed, higher-capacity USB memory sticks.

Further Information

* Additional information about the Agilent 6000 Series is available at www.agilent.com/find/scope-new.

* An in-depth article titled "Oscilloscopes Evolve to Meet Today’s and Tomorrow’s Measurement Challenges" can be found at www.agilent.com/find/DSO6000_backgrounder.

U.S. Pricing and Availability

The Agilent 6000 Series oscilloscopes are available now at the following prices:

Memory upgrades start at $500. Customer-installable DSO-to-MSO upgrade kit is priced at $2,000.

In addition to scrutinizing a spec sheet, it helps to turn the knobs and push the buttons on a piece of test gear to get a feel for what it can, and cannot, do. That's exactly what I had an opportunity to do with one of Agilent's new 6000 Series scopes. These are the newest additions to the existing 6000 line-up, which we introduced last February here at eeProductCenter. The table shows where the new 100-MHz scopes fit in.

Note that Agilent's competitor Tektronix also offers 100-MHz scopes, namely its TDS3012 and TDS3014Bs. These have 1.25-Gsample/s sample rates, as opposed to the 6000's 2-Gsample/s rate.

They're also limited to a 10-kpoint memory depth, and have only two or four analog channels, with no digital logic inputs. The Tek scopes update at 2600 waveforms/s. As such, it's likely that Tektronix will be compelled to roll out some new products in the near future to compete with Agilent's latest wares.

First Impressions

At the behest of Johnnie Hancock, Agilent's program manager at the company's Electronics Products and Solutions group, I recently drove one of these new instruments. I got my first impression from the front-panel.

For the 6000s, it's clean and relatively easy to decipher and use—and the display is striking. The 6000 Series provide 3-D viewing, using a high definition XGA color LCD. It gives you a crisp 768 x 1024 screen area, for a 640 vertical-point x 1000 horizontal-point waveform view.

The TFT (thin film transistor) 6.3-in. LCD provides 256 intensity levels, too, something no other competing oscilloscope presently has. "It's superior to good old analog scope technology," avows Hancock. "There's even an Intensity control knob that lets you control trace detail."

Could this be the ultimate mixed-signal 100-MHz scope? With 16 logic timing channels that handle TTL, CMOS, and ECL, these new 6000 Series scopes, with either two or four analog channels, don't compromise very much.

For starters, they provide reliable triggering across all channels. And, without any special modes, you get a 100,000-waveform/s update rate. Scope vertical resolution is 8 bits, and horizontal timing resolution is within 2.5-ps. The logic channels accept signals to 250-MHz.

With the fast update, you get to see instant responses on-screen, with the ability to visually see things such as jitter, noise, and even infrequent glitches and spurious signals. As Agilent points out, this realtime update rate is more than 27 times faster than that of a typical digital scope in this class.

These scopes have very low dead times between acquisitions, too. If a glitch occurs during a scope's dead time, you'll miss it. By minimizing dead time, you improve the probability of the glitch occurring during acquisition time. With a 100,000 waveform/s update rate, it's unlikely that you'll miss a narrow transient, or a glitch, or distorted edge.

Click for larger image

The 6000 scopes also use analog comparator trigger circuits to eliminate trigger jitter (diagram above), and offer time-qualified pattern triggering.

Deep Memory

As infinite persistence storage scopes, these capabilities are backed by a Megapoint of memory (upgradeable to 2-Mpoints or even 8-Mpoints). Even with just 1-Mpoint of memory, you can capture long non-repeating signals and maintain high sample rates. That lets you rapidly zoom in on a signal's areas of interest.

With the as-supplied standard memory configuration, with the oscilloscope channels turned off, you get 1-Mpoint for one logic analyzer pod, and 500-kpoints for each pod. With the scope channels turned on, you get 312-kpoints for one pod, and 56-kpoints for each pod.

By the way, you can expand the capabilities of any Series 6000 scope at any time. You can upgrade to include 16 timing channel capabilities or choose a memory upgrade. The memory hardware is already in the scope; all you need do is buy the upgrade and turn it on.

Analog And Digital Triggering

You also get a panoply of triggering choices as standard features. Triggering across all four scope channels and 16 logic channels, you can also select a number of serial triggers using a straightforward process to set up serial bus triggers to sift through frames.

Instead of using edge triggering to capture and trace serial data, the scope's serial bus triggering scheme automatically finds the right pattern in long streams of bits. Built-in serial triggering supports LIN (Local Interconnect Network), I^sC, USB (Universal Serial Bus), CAN (Control area network), and SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) triggers.

You also get a variety of dedicated analog TV triggers for capturing baseband HDTV/EDTV signals. The scopes support emerging standards such as 1080i, 1080p, 720p, and 480p as well as standard video triggering. You can trigger on lines within a field, all lines, all fields, and odd or even fields. The system supports NTSC, SECAM, PAL, and PAL-M video.

Connectivity Hooks

The scopes also include, as standard features, a range of connectivity hooks. USB 2.0 is standard, as is IEEE-488.2/GPIB (general Purpose Interface Bus) and 10Base-T/100-Base-T Ethernet. There's even an XGA video output jack. The scopes also feature auto-scaling, probe/channel de-skew capabilities, and trigger hold-off functions.

It's worth noting that some users assume mixed-signal scopes are limited to 8-bit applications. As Hancock emphasizes, that's not typically the case, as most mixed-signal instruments are primarily used to monitor analog and digital I/O around controllers or DSPs, not system buses.

The internal buses of these chips aren't accessible, so evaluating a scope on the number of bits of processing in an internal bus-based design isn't really irrelevant.

Sixteen channels of digital acquisition, along with two to four channels of analog acquisition and triggering, is usually more than enough to monitor and verify the functions of 8-bit and 16-bit controller systems, and even some 32-bit designs. If those types of controller-centric designs are what you’re working on, be sure to take a closer look at these new 100-MHz additions to Agilent’s 6000 Family.

Click here for a datasheet (in Adobe Acrobat .PDF format).

For more info, contact Agilent Technologies Inc., 395 Page Mill Rd., Palo Alto, Calif. 94303. Phone: 800-829-4444. Fax: (650) 752-5300.

Agilent Technologies, (650) 752-5000, www.agilent.com