Where switching meets instrumentation (continued)
A continuation of our interview with John Regazzi, CEO and a director of Giga-tronics, which appeared in the March 2008 Viewpoint column.
By Larry Maloney, Contributing Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 3/1/2008
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Q: How has Giga-tronics evolved over the years?
A: Giga-tronics was founded in 1980 as a startup by key managers and engineers from Systron Donner, a test and measurement company. So we have strong roots in the test business. The initial product was a frequency synthesizer, which became quite popular in applications for the US Navy. Along the way, the company acquired additional synthesizer products from Fluke, as well as power measurement products from Wavetek. That was essentially the company for its first 15 years. Since then, we acquired Ascor, a leading switching company, and then Microsource, a supplier of microwave components.
Q: What are the key changes you’ve made in Giga-tronics operations since becoming CEO in 2006?
A: The main step we’ve taken is to consolidate two of our three operations for greater efficiency and to establish a single leadership team rather than to continue with three separate management teams. This is going to make it much easier for us to combine our underlying technologies. Before the consolidation, Ascor operated out of Fremont, CA, while the signal-generator and power-measurement business was centered in San Ramon, CA. We now operate both businesses out of San Ramon. We’ve kept manufacturing of Microsource’s components in Santa Rosa, since we have government work that requires a secure facility, but we have moved Microsource’s engineering staff to San Ramon.
Q: How will these changes benefit your engineer customers?
A: We’ve only been together for less than a year, but we expect to see the benefits of this consolidation very soon. Now that all of our engineering staff are co-located in San Ramon, it is going to be much easier to achieve synergies in our products. For example, our component designers are now able to better understand the needs of our instrument designers. Already, we’ve been able to optimize our YIG (yttrium iron garnet) oscillators for our signal generators, and we are working on a consistent look and feel across our product lines.
Q: What are the most important market or application areas for Giga-tronics?
A: The defense market remains our single largest segment. As a signal-generation company, we’ve got analog modulation—AM, FM, and pulse. And, as noted, the custom switching we do often finds its way into defense applications, as well as satellite and aerospace. Our peak power meters are frequently used to measure radar signals.
We do have a commercial presence, as previously discussed, in such areas as antenna and RFIC test. And although we do not offer the digital modulation that is needed in the cellular world, our power meters are used in production test for cellphones. In medical, our switches are used in test systems that must measure millivolt signals in such devices as heart monitors and pacemakers.
Q: How are changes in those markets driving the kinds of products you are developing at Giga-tronics?
A: On the commercial side, bandwidths keep increasing for WiMAX and ultrawideband technology, which is leading us to widen the bandwidth of our power meters to handle those signals. Wider bandwidth communications also are prompting us to extend our pulse-measurement capabilities.
Q: In terms of geographic markets, where is Giga-tronics seeing its fastest growth?
A: The domestic markets are relatively stable at this point. We’re finding that our fastest growth is in Europe, driven primarily by aerospace/defense maintenance applications. Recently, we hired anew sales and marketing manager with a lot of experience in Asia, so, like many companies, we hope to focus more on China and Southeast Asia.
Q: Would you describe an important new product that reflects the direction of your company’s technology?
A: I would start with our new 2520GTA signal generator. It is derived from our standard 2500, where we offered very low phase noise and fast switching in a single box. With the new product, we optimized switching speed and created a unique interface that allows us to achieve fast switching over GPIB using standard function calls. We also created an electronic attenuator to get away from the slow stepping of manual attenuators. Every 2520GTA also comes with our Automation Xpress ATE system software package to help engineers get up and running fast.
Another notable product, which comes from our switching side, is our 4000 series signal routing platform. We’ve had a long history with modularity in VXI, and we’re also offering productions in PXI. The 4000 series offers a unique approach to getting the maximum out of a modular platform, in that it features an analog backplane that gets embedded inside the frame. The result is very high performance for high-density switching applications.
Looking to the future, we will be combining our RF and microwave synthesis with our modularity expertise, and that is going to lead to some very innovative products.
Q: How important will software and embedded firmware be to your product offerings in the future?
A: This is a very critical area. As we start thinking about next-generation products, our view is that embedded firmware needs to be tightly coupled with the hardware and fine-tuned for all the real-time functions that go on inside an instrument. The complex interface really should belong more in the software domain. A lot of the measurement algorithms and higher-level functions can be better managed in a software environment than in embedded firmware. The real challenge is to partition those tasks so that you don’t hamper the overall performance of the instrument, but instead maximize throughput.
Our test and measurement products really are moving in the direction of being PC peripherals, and the 2500 family of signal generators is an important step in that direction. Our designers made a conscious effort to simplify the firmware inside the unit to both maximize speed and to simplify the user interface. We’ve moved all the complex functions to the Automation Xpress software package, which runs on a PC. As a result of this combination of features, we are getting a very good reaction from engineers, who really appreciate a straightforward, easy-to-use unit that can handle both complex and simple applications.
Read the first part of this interview.
