Agilent pushes oscilloscope price/performance standards

The Infiniium S-Series is designed around a fast 10bit A/D converter. This allows devices in the range to offer four times the vertical resolution of previous models, a feature enhanced by the 15in touchscreen display. Meanwhile, a low noise front end increass the effective number of bits to more than eight, said by Agilent to be the highest in the industry. Devices in the series handle bandwidths ranging from 500MHz to 8GHz and the family includes four channel DSO models and mixed signal devices with 16 channels. All come with 50Mpts per channel. The 6000 X-Series includes two and four channel DSO models and MSO models with 16 digital channels. Bandwidth ranges from 1GHz to 6GHz at sample rates of up to 20Gsample/s. Models in the 6000 X-Series come with a 12.1in multitouch capacitive touchscreen that helps the user to visualise and isolate more anomalies than with older devices. The scopes also support voice control in 14 languages. "Customers working on higher speed digital designs and RF embedded designs can choose between these two new oscilloscope platforms, depending on their needs and budget," said Jay Alexander, general manager of Agilent's Oscilloscope and Protocol Division. "Both series offer excellent signal integrity, signal visualisation and analysis capability, along with significant innovation to help engineers overcome their debugging challenges."