Diminish debug downtime

recently introduced 12 portable digital storage and mixed signal oscilloscopes (DSOs/MSOs) with bandwidths of 300 MHz, 500 MHz and the industry's first portable 1 GHz offering.

With a real-time display update rate up to 30 times faster than competing models, the Agilent 6000 Series can reportedly show critical events in complex waveforms, reducing design verification and debug time. Agilent says its oscilloscopes provide waveform viewing and measurement insight for embedded system designers in the aerospace/defence, automotive, communications and consumer electronics industries.

For the most exceptional waveform viewing, the oscilloscopes feature Agilent's patented MegaZoom III display technology. MegaZoom III is said to provide real-time, high-resolution XGA waveform viewing with 256 levels of colour-intensity grades, and memory depth up to a full eight Meg points, which Agilent claims is 800 times more than the competition.

"Engineers face design problems that are increasingly digital in nature -- more and faster signals, wider time spans and serial triggering," said Galen Wampler, industry analyst at Prime Data. "Agilent's new portable oscilloscopes will provide the performance needed to address these measurement challenges. Optimised waveform update rates and display resolution, plus the ability to add 16 logic-timing channels, will significantly reduce debugging time."

"Customers will no longer need to switch to larger lab scopes that are optimised for advanced waveform analysis to capture and display critical signals at sustained sampling speeds over longer time spans,” added said Ron Nersesian, vice president and general manager of Agilent's Design Validation Division. “This is a major shortcoming of competing products."

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 customers can initially order a 2+16 or 4+16 channel MSO or a traditional DSO and easily upgrade to an MSO configuration later.

The 6000 Series oscilloscopes come standard with LAN, GP-IB 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 large memory records, screen images and settings on standard higher-speed, higher-capacity USB memory sticks.