test&measurementZONE Products for the week of May 28, 2012

LeCroy Corporation Says…

LabMaster 10 Zi: World's Fastest Real-time Oscilloscope with 65 GHz Bandwidth
Outlines Roadmap to 100 GHz Real-time Bandwidth

LeCroy Corporation announced the extension of the LabMaster 10 Zi product line to 65 GHz from a previously announced 60 GHz, and unveils a roadmap to provide 100 GHz of real-time bandwidth in the LabMaster 10 Zi platform. The improvement to 65 GHz is made possible by outstanding results achieved with 8HP SiGe chipsets, which are performing beyond expectations. The world's first 100 GHz real-time oscilloscope using LeCroy's patented Digital Bandwidth Interleave (DBI) technology will be available in calendar year 2013. This technology is used in LeCroy's current product lines to achieve 45 GHz real-time bandwidth, and has been supplied to customers since 2010.

LeCroy's silicon bandwidth advantage is due to years of accumulated experience with widely adopted, mainstream, commercial SiGe processes. LeCroy uses 8HP SiGe, the most recently available process, to obtain 36 GHz on four channels. LeCroy's 65 GHz model and 100 GHz plans are implemented with LeCroy's patented and proven technology path, DBI. Furthermore, LeCroy's proprietary ChannelSync architecture in the LabMaster 10 Zi oscilloscopes permits precise synchronization of up to eighty silicon-based 36 GHz / 80 GS/s channels and up to forty 65 GHz / 160 GS/s DBI channels - capability not offered by any other manufacturer - with a future 100 GHz upgrade path.

Modular Oscilloscope Platform Enhances Usage

The LabMaster modular oscilloscope architecture separates the oscilloscope signal acquisition function from the display, control, and processing functions. The LabMaster Master Control Module (MCM-Zi) contains the display, controls, ChannelSync architecture, and a powerful server-class CPU. LabMaster 10 Zi Acquisition Modules, provide silicon-based 36 GHz performance with up to 65 GHz on two channels (and future upgrade to 100 GHz on one channel). One LabMaster 10 Zi Master Control Module and one LabMaster 10 Zi Acquisition Module function as a single, conventional four channel 36 GHz oscilloscope, or as a conventional two-channel 65 GHz and four-channel 36 GHz oscilloscope. However, by using ChannelSync architecture, up to twenty LabMaster 10 Zi Acquisition Modules can be perfectly synchronized, thus extending the already unique channel density performance by a factor of twenty to achieve up to eighty channels at 36 GHz and forty channels at 65 GHz. A newly announced expansion module for LabMaster oscilloscopes provides the capability to quadruple the total number of acquisition modules and channels compared to before.

EN-Genius Says…

Wow! This is the first 4-channel scope with silicon-based bandwidth that offers 20 GHz, and you can connect up to twenty acquisition modules to give up to 80 channels at 36 GHz. The system is based on a new HP8 SiGe chipset with switching speeds in excess of 200 GHz.

With bandwidth interleaving (DBI in LeCroy parlance) and a sampling rate of 80 Gsample/s extends the silicon bandwidth to 65 GHz, with a maximum of 40 channels and a trigger bandwidth of 30 GHz. There are 1024 Mpoint/channel analysis memories.

The display, control and processing are separated in a different unit to the acquisition functions. The 10 Zi system is backwards compatible with the earlier LabMaster 9 Zi-A oscilloscopes.

The internal display is a 15.3 inch 16 x 9 WXGA color touch screen but an external display up to WQXGA 2560 x 1600 pixels can be connected. The master control unit provides the built-in display, the control panel, and the ChannelSync distributed 10 GHz clock that synchronizes all the channels. Connections to the separate acquisition modules are on multi-lane PCIe for both control and data.

Up to 20 acquisition modules can be configured to a single master with the input channel assignments indicated by lighted tallies.

The CPU uses Intel Xeon X5660 processors with 2.8 GHz per core, six cores per processor, and two processors for each CPU for a total effective 33.6 GHz clock speed. The standard RAM is 24 Gbyte with an optional 192 Gbyte available.

Dozens of math tools are available with up to 8 math function traces displayed and up to 2 operations on each function trace. For measurements there are dozens of parameters available with up to 12 displayed, with statistics, and histicons provide fast and dynamic views of parameters and wave shapes. Jitter timing and analysis is available using frequency, time and statistical views with multiple tools available. A complete software toolset is provided. Other software options include integrity tools, de-embedding, symbol decode, serial data mask, and a spectrum analyzer mode with FFT capability.

The master control module consumes 450 VA and another 1350 VA is required for 10 acquisition modules. Each unit has its own power cord. Total weight for a system would typically be 48 kg.

The applications for the LabMaster 10 Zi high-bandwidth oscilloscopes will, of course, be very limited – because of the pricing – and will undoubtedly be focused on areas such as massively parallel optical systems. LeCroy have indicated that they have not finished pushing the bandwidth envelope.

The 65 GHz 10 Zi acquisition module is priced at $355,000 and a complete 2-channel/65 GHz, 4-channel/36 GHz oscilloscope is priced at $451,900. Deliveries are expected to start this summer of 2012.

Data Sheet