Adding a benchtop look and feel to modular instruments

An exclusive interview with a technical leader

Rick Nelson, Chief Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 11/1/2006

Christopher Ziomek President and Founder ZTEC Instruments Albuquerque, NM Christopher Ziomek founded ZTEC Instruments, which designs and manufactures modular instrumentation products, in 1996. He has over 20 years experience in the test-equipment industry, as an instrument designer, engineering manager, and entrepreneur. At ZTEC Instruments, he guides the company’s strategic vision and technology roadmap. Prior to founding ZTEC Instruments, he worked as a section leader at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and as a microwave engineer at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. He holds BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering and is a licensed Professional Engineer in the state of New Mexico. Chief editor Rick Nelson spoke with Ziomek at Autotestcon and followed up with an e-mail interview. Christopher Ziomek comments on emerging instrument standards and elaborates on ZTEC's past and future in the continuation of this interview.

A: ZTEC Instruments is currently celebrating its 10-year anniversary. ZTEC was founded as a custom-design-engineering firm. Our early efforts led to the development of our first standard product, a VXI-based digitizer. Development of standard products became a priority and led to the point where we are today.

Q: Could you summarize ZTEC's hardware and software offerings?

A: ZTEC develops modular instrumentation products for PCI, PXI, and VXI. Our product focus is modular oscilloscopes with many resolution and sample-rate options available. In addition, we offer analog and digital arbitrary waveform and function generators as well as RF and timing instruments.

Q: You mentioned VXI, and the new ZT4610 4-Gsample/s digital storage oscilloscope comes in VXI, as well as PCI, CompactPCI, and PXI formats. Many vendors seem to be de-emphasizing VXI. Why introduce a new VXI instrument now?

A: VXI suffers a perception problem. Most people do not realize that it is a viable and significant market. Most of the negativity surrounding VXI has been generated from competing interests, not from actual users. Because users require the benefits that VXI delivers, it continues to be the platform of choice for many customers.

In addition, providing VXI support is quite simple for us. Our design philosophy is to reuse technology as much as possible. By making reuse a priority, we are able to port our designs to many platforms with minimal effort.

Q: Your new scope includes an onboard analysis library powered by a 64-bit processor. Why not rely on an external PC for processing?

A: There are many reasons why onboard processing is preferred. For one, much of the high-speed processing simply cannot be done rapidly using a centralized PC. Examples include continuous averaging, envelope capture, and limit testing. In addition, we feel that a PC-centric model puts too much of a burden on our users. The need for development, validation, and maintenance of complex software is undesirable. Instead, our onboard processing model provides a benchtop-like interface that requires only a thin layer of software to control the instrument.

Finally, we feel that onboard measurements increase test throughput. Instead of downloading entire waveforms, the user can simply download a measurement or test result.

Q: In addition to sample rate, what specs are important to your customers, and in those respects, how does your company compare with the competition?

A: Sample rate is a basic and important starting point when considering oscilloscope options. Bandwidth is also an important specification for many applications. The new ZT4610 family achieves sample-rate and bandwidth specifications comparable to most mid-performance benchtop oscilloscopes.

Beyond the banner specifications, users have many concerns. Items such as ease of use, screen-update rates, and product service and support are often just as important as the banner specifications. Satisfying all these requirements is a very challenging and exciting task that requires a close relationship with our customers.