Tektronix acquires SyntheSys Research, cites user study

Tektronix made news at the Embedded Systems Conference April 29 with its announcement that it has acquired SyntheSys Research, maker of the BertScope line of instruments for identifying errors in digital bit streams. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.Also at ESC, Tektronix highlighted a time and motion study it sponsored that demonstrated that engineers searching for runts and glitches when debugging designs performed 53% faster when using Tektronix scopes compared with competitors’ versions.

“For this study we conducted in-person interviews with 47 experienced oscilloscope users, asked them to complete the same debug task from start to finish and to describe their experience,” said Andrea Eaker, Senior Research Consultant at Hansa GCR, which conducted the study. ” This directional research indicated that users were able to find runts and glitches in a signal twice as fast with the Tektronix oscilloscope compared to the Agilent and LeCroy scopes. Users also found the automated search feature and available triggers particularly useful in completing these tasks, and Tektronix received the highest satisfaction ratings overall.”

The participants were asked to perform three tasks on each scope:
-set-up the oscilloscope to monitor for glitches and runts,
-set up a trigger and capture a runt, and
-search the waveform to locate all runt instances.