Driving demand for MSOs are today's increasingly complex embedded system designs, where there is a strong need to correlate analog and digital signals. Tektronix notes that embedded systems like network switches and data servers are incorporating faster technology, necessitating higher performance MSOs. Meanwhile, application areas such as high speed serial and digital RF require full system visibility to understand bus contention issues and other timing related concerns.

"Higher-speed MSOs are becoming more important as bus speeds increase in frequency and type. The need to visualize multiple digital buses of gigabit speeds simultaneously while performing analog debug beyond 4GHz is critical," said Brian Reich, vice president, performance oscilloscopes, Tektronix.

With an analog bandwidth ranging from 4 to 20GHz, depending on the model, and 80ps digital channel timing resolution, Tektronix claims to have combined the 'signal visibility and timing features of a high performance logic analyser with the analog precision, probing and usability of a high performance real-time oscilloscope.' With up to 250 million points capable of being recorded and sample rates of 50GS/s analog and 12.5GS/s digital, Tektronix says that this MSO can capture long duration events with high sample resolution.

Triggering capabilities include serial pattern, mixed analog and digital, logic pattern, and bus state triggers. Another feature is the timing synchronisation between the analog and digital subsystems, resulting in an easier determination of cause and effect in circuit operation. Some 30 analysis suites run on the MSO70000's, enabling users to perform I2C and SPI bus analysis, DPOJET for jitter and eye diagram analysis, and SignalVu for Frequency Domain display and analysis, among others.

Lastly, there's a variety of solder-in probe accessories that come with this MSO, making connections to vias and fine pitch components on tightly packed boards easier. Meanwhile, Tektronix' iCapture technology allows internal routing of selected digital signals to the analog channels for analog evaluation.

The MSO70000 completes Tektronix' portfolio of MSOs, which spans the lower-priced portable MSO2000 up to the 20GHz MSO72004.