Measuring and Understanding Oscilloscope Update Rate

By Brig Asay, Agilent Technologies

The emergence of faster processors and new custom ASICs on oscilloscopes has resulted in oscilloscopes that now advertise waveform updates rates of up to one-million-updates per second. In fact, the recent trend is for update rate to become a leading oscilloscope specification, almost becoming more important than memory depth. While one-million-waveforms per second is impressive, it is important to understand what the specification really means, as well as the settings required to achieve an ultra-fast update rate such as this. An oscilloscope that runs at 300,000 waveforms per second in one mode may run at less than one waveform per second in another mode. As a user, it is important to know how the oscilloscope will ultimately be used. Will the oscilloscope simply capture data or do margin testing via masks? Will the oscilloscope be used as a deep analytical tool separating jitter or doing real time eye measurements? Will the oscilloscopes data be offloaded to a PC for further analysis or will everything be done inside the oscilloscopes hardware? It is questions like these that matter when update rate is used as a serious criterion for purchasing an oscilloscope. When purchasing an oscilloscope, do not just believe the data sheets. To make an informed decision, understand how the oscilloscope will be used and measure the update rate based on this. In other words, do not purchase an oscilloscope based off a one million waveforms per second specification when in your use model, the oscilloscope is updating at less than one update per second.
Figure 1: The 90000 X-Series oscilloscope from Agilent

What is update rate? In the simplest definition, update rate is the speed at which the scope is acquiring and analyzing data (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Dead time represents missed data In an oscilloscope acquisition, an oscilloscope will search for a trigger and when it finds the event, it will trigger on it. After the trigger, the oscilloscope then acquires the set memory depth and moves the data through hardware such as the pre-amplifier and the ADC. It then moves the data through any digital signal processing (DSP) and finally the data is left to the core processor to do any of its analysis (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Flow of data between acquisitions

After the data flows through this entire process, the oscilloscope re-arms, a new event is triggered, and data is re-acquired. The rate at which an oscilloscope triggers, acquires/processes data, and then retriggers is the oscilloscopes update rate. When reviewing the update rate process, it seems like trigger rate could be used interchangeably with update rate; however, some oscilloscopes will trigger multiple times while the data is being processed

and ignore the newly triggered event, making the trigger rate different than the oscilloscope update rate. The faster the update rate, the more events are being captured and analyzed by the oscilloscope (this does not necessarily mean more data is being processed).

How to measure update rate To measure update rate, you simply need a counter that is fast enough to keep up with the oscilloscopes update rate. The counter needs to be two to three times faster than how quickly the oscilloscope is updating. To measure update rate, the following procedure needs to be followed: 1. Find the TRIG OUT output of the oscilloscope. Some oscilloscopes use their AUX OUT, while others oscilloscopes use the TRIG OUT. 2. If the scope uses AUX OUT, change the AUX OUT setting to be TRIG OUT. Typically this setting can be found in the users preference menu. 3. Connect the TRIG/AUX OUT of the oscilloscope to the hardware counter. 4. Connect a waveform source to the oscilloscope. Most sources will output signals at rates that are faster than an oscilloscope can capture. For the update rate measurement, use the data sheet of the source to ensure it is faster than the oscilloscope. 5. Output the waveforms into the oscilloscope and enable the counter 6. Adjust the oscilloscope to the measurement you want to measure (for instance, enable the mask test). 7. Record the measurement from the counter. 8. Adjust the oscilloscope to the next measurement setting that needs to be tested and repeat steps 6 and 7. To fully evaluate update rate, it should be known that update rate changes as a function of memory depth on the oscilloscope. Therefore, you should record the update rate for varying memory depths. If possible, take measurements under all settings that the scope will be used. This will ensure the most complete picture.

Where the limitations begin Currently, one -million -waveforms per second is considered the fastest update rate on a real time oscilloscope. However, for oscilloscopes with bandwidths greater than 1 GHz, no oscilloscope achieves greater than a few thousand waveforms per second unless it is in a special mode. Also, the few thousand updates per second update rate is not achieved during typical use of a high performance oscilloscope. A more typical update rate is closer to one update per second. Why is this? High -performance oscilloscope users tend to use their oscilloscopes to do deep analysis. The more analysis an oscilloscope is performing, the slower the oscilloscope updates as the oscilloscope becomes burdened by the

processing, causing the processor and software to become the update rate limiter. Deep analysis pushes oscilloscope vendors to use high end processors with multiple gigabytes of RAM. Even with fast processors, the processing will dominate the acquisition speed of the oscilloscope. Oscilloscope update rates can be slowed in a number of fashions. Measurements such as deeper memory, protocol analysis, de-embedding, equalization, jitter separation are just a few on a long list of update rate bottle necks. A user may start with an update rate of three thousand waveforms per second at 1 kpts of data. The user may then want to see the data with 10 Mpts, which slows the update rate by a factor of 100 and means the update rate is now thirty waveforms per second. (Table 1 shows the impact of memory depth on update rate for a particular oscilloscope.) Memory Depth 1 kpt 1 Mpt 100 Mpt 1 Gpt Update Rate (wfm/sec) 3085 30 0.3 0.003

Table 1: The impact of memory depth on update rate as measured on the Infiniium 90000 X-Series

The user may then turn on clock recovery (which forces software to track every clock edge in the waveform) and measure the time interval error of the waveform. Now the oscilloscope is updating at three waveforms per second. Finally, the user may wish to separate jitter into random and periodic components. An update rate which was once 3000 wfm/sec has now been slowed to updating once every 5 seconds. Of course, the once-every-5-seconds update rate is an example based on one oscilloscope vendors oscilloscope. Another oscilloscope vendors oscilloscope doing the same measurement may take over twenty seconds. Apples to apples comparisons A common mistake that is made during update -rate comparisons is not ensuring the settings on one oscilloscope are the same as the other oscilloscope. For instance, the Agilent Infiniium line-up of oscilloscopes defaults with interpolation on. Interpolation is a filter which uses math to ensure that edges are properly depicted by essentially increasing the sample rate by a factor of sixteen (it should be noted that interpolation is not over sampling). When interpolation is turned on, the oscilloscope runs slower as the oscilloscope must display sixteen times the points as compared to when interpolation is turned off. By defaulting to interpolation on, Agilent is trading off update rate speed for measurement accuracy. Other vendors choose to default with interpolation off. Simply by having this default setup be different between oscilloscope vendors, update rate measurements are now incorrect and biased to the vendor with the interpolation set to off as the default. Another example of differences that impact the sanctity of the measurement is how much memory is actually being used in the measurement.

For instance, if comparing real time eye update rate, the deeper the memory, the more unit intervals (UI) that are captured in a single trigger. Agilent Infiniium oscilloscopes use all selected memory depth in their real time eye measurements (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: Acquisition menu of a typical oscilloscope

Other vendors use the time base of the oscilloscope to choose the memory depth. While you may choose a MAX MEMORY DEPTH of 50 Mpts, if the time base is in a faster setting, the real time eye is only measuring a few thousand points per acquisition. This will obviously mean much faster update rates and unfortunately an incorrect measurement, Figure 5.

Figure 5: Acquisition menu showing both MAX MEMORY and Maximum Sample Points

The final example of something that can impact an update rate measurement is the trigger jitter. Oscilloscope vendors all have settings that minimize the trigger jitter at the trigger point. Agilents Infiniium oscilloscopes call this setting their jitter -free setting. Agilent oscilloscopes essentially never turn off the jitter-free setting, ensuring minimized trigger jitter and maximizing measurement accuracy. However, not running jitter will speed up the oscilloscope. Other oscilloscope vendors make the user turn on their jitter free. Typically this mode can be found in the trigger menu of the oscilloscope.

To enable true comparisons of update rate, ensure the three settings above are the same across different oscilloscopes when making the measurements. Conclusion Over the last several months, much has been written about the update rate specification. Data sheets will show the oscilloscopes fastest update rate (for instance, the Agilent Infiniium 90000 X-Series shows the update rate in segmented mode), but that is not the update rate the oscilloscope user is typically experiencing. Update rate impacts user experience and job performance because slow update rates mean less work can be finished. Fortunately, measuring update rate is a simple process and requires very little hardware. By understanding how to measure update rate and ensuring true apples-to-apples comparisons, users can include update rate as a key purchasing decision point. About the author Brig Asay manages product planning and strategic marketing for Agilents highperformance oscilloscope business. He joined Agilent Technologies in 2005 as a Technical Support Engineer. During his five years with Agilent, he has held positions as Marketing Operations Manager, where he oversaw the marketing budget and managed the technical support and learning products teams; and Technical Support Engineer, which he helped solve numerous customer problems. Previously to Agilent, Brig worked at Micron Technologies, Inc. as a Test Engineer. Brig graduated with an MBA from Northwest Nazarene University and BS Electrical Engineering from the University of Wyoming. He is a published technical author.