The Best in Test

TDS3000 Digital Phosphor Oscilloscope Family / Tektronix
Tektronix takes its popular digital phosphor acquisition and display technology and makes it available to applications requiring small, battery-operated scopes. The TDS3000 scopes emulate analog scopes by displaying color-gradient persistence or intensity-gradient persistence in near real time. The TDS3000 line consists of six models that include two and four channels and sample rates from 1.25 Gsamples/s to 5 Gsamples/s. These scopes weigh just 7 lbs and operate for up to 2 hrs at a time on rechargeable batteries. Application modules extend the scope’s capabilities to add FFT calculations and video triggering. www.tek.com/Measurement

NetSight Machine-Vision Engine / Imaging Technology
With NetSight, you can place dedicated vision computers where you need them on a production line. The NetSight package provides a small computer that runs with Windows CE, an operating system designed for embedded applications. Although NetSight units can work independently, they easily communicate over standard networks. Each package includes frame grabbers that operate with a variety of cameras, both digital and analog. And you get digital I/O lines for control and sensing applications. The manufacturer supplies its MVTools software, a set of C and C++ libraries that let you develop your application around proven algorithms and routines. www.imaging.com

NI 5911 Digitizer / National Instruments
You get the best of a data-acquisition board and an oscilloscope board in the NI 5911. This board operates as an 8-bit, 100-Msamples/s scope card, but it can easily adapt its operation to trade resolution for speed. In a slower mode, for example, it resolves signals with a resolution of 21 bits at a 10-kHz bandwidth. The company’s innovative “Flex” technology provides a special delta-sigma ADC that works in conjunction with an onboard DSP and filters to lower noise and linearize the ADC’s output. The NI 5911 operates on the PCI bus, and it comes with software drivers for LabView and LabWindows/CVI programming languages, as well as oscilloscope drivers. www.natinst.com

Waverunner Oscilloscpe Series / LeCroy
With the Waverunner, LeCroy adds midrange speed models to its line of high-end DSOs. The Waverunner series bring features such as deep memory (250 ksamples to 1 Msample), 500-Msample/s acquisition, advanced triggering, and math within reach of engineers and technicians. In addition, the Waverunners feature analog persistence, an attribute that displays frequency of occurrence for multiple waveforms in either intensity or color gradients. Optional jitter and timing software extends the gradients to communications and digital pulse timing and jitter measurements. You also can store waveforms on a floppy disk or on a PC Card. www.lecroy.com

AutoSignal Software / SPSS
The AutoSignal software provides easy-to-use procedures for spectral analysis, time-domain analysis, and signal processing. Instead of programming the software using cryptic commands or connecting boxes, a user makes menu selections that determine how the computer will analyze and present data. Selecting a processing step or algorithm causes the software to provide further menus or windows so you can tailor performance to your needs. After you make a processing selection, the software immediately presents processing results in 2-D or 3-D views. www.spss.com

LogicWave Logic Analyzer / Agilent Technologies
The LogicWave brings 34 channels of logic analysis to any Windows-based PC through the PC’s parallel port. You get 100-MHz timing analysis and 250-MHz state analysis with 128 ksamples per channel. The control software lets you set up triggers and organize signals in groups such as bus signals, clocks, or any name you want. Because you use a PC to set up the instrument and display data, you don’t have to learn to operate the LogicWave with buttons as you do with stand-alone logic analyzers. Two levels of triggers let you trigger an acquisition on either pulse durations or sequencial events. (This product was released under the company’s former name, Hewlett-Packard.) www.agilent.com

Spectrum 8950-Series ADSL Tester / Teradyne
Targeting the growing market for asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) modems, line cards, DSLAM (digital subscriber-line access multiplexer) products, and remote-access servers, the Spectrum 8950 integrates in-circuit, functional, and system-level test within a single-stage manufacturing test platform. The open, modular VXIbus architecture and Windows NT operating system provide sufficient flexibility to enable the 8950 to evolve along with ADSL technology. Test capabilities range from power-off in-circuit test through functional error-rate measurements in the presence of simulated POTS interference and line impairments. The tester meets the test requirements of the ANSI T1.413-1998 (Issue 2) standard. www.teradyne.com

TetraMAX Automatic Test Pattern Generator / Synopsys
The TetraMAX automatic test-pattern-generation and fault-simulation tool generates test patterns quickly and automatically, supporting test development for multimillion-gate designs. Its vector-compaction feature helps reduce test time while maintaining high fault coverage. Integrated with Synopsys’ DC Expert Plus design-for-test package, which synthesizes scan chains, TetraMAX can directly read Verilog design files, making it unnecessary for ASIC designers to create special ATPG libraries. TetraMAX also supports the IEEE’s STIL (Standard Test Interface Language). The graphical interface, with context-sensitive help, makes it easy for RTL designers as well as test engineers to generate test patterns. www.synopsys.com

PZ4000 Power Analyzer / Yokogawa Corporation of America
The PZ4000 is really a specialized oscilloscope designed for making measurements on power lines. With the PZ4000, you get enough sampling (5 Msamples/s) to measure up to the 500th harmonic of power-line frequencies (up to 2.5 MHz). With 4 Msamples of data memory, the PZ4000 measures voltage and current, then calculates power and displays the relationships between all three parameters on a color display. Modules that plug into the back of the unit let you take up to four voltage and four current measurements. An external trigger input lets you trigger measurements in synchronization with an outside source such as a motor. www.yca.com

HP 93000 SOC Series Testers / Agilent Technologies
The HP 93000 SOC Series features a single-chip test-processor-per-pin architecture to address the full range of test challenges that mixed-signal system-on-chip (SOC) devices present. The Models C200 and C400 serve cost-driven SOC market segments, while the Models P600, P800, and P1000 offer enough head room for at-speed test at data rates to 1 Gbps. The 600-MHz and 800-MHz P models offer a pay-per-use feature that gives you access to 800-MHz and 1-GHz performance as you need it. A 93000 system accommodates as many as 960 digital pins plus as many as 32 integrated, low-noise-floor analog instruments. (This product was released under the company’s former name, Hewlett-Packard.) www.agilent.com

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