LeCroy Claims Clear Oscilloscope Leadership

The 20 GHz bandwidth on each of the four channels makes the WaveMaster 8 Zi-A Series well suited for testing emerging 40/100 GbE DWDM devices and systems. It can be part of an optical DP-QPSK test system for measuring 100+ GbE, and to measure the electrical properties of multi-lane 40/100 GbE transmissions. The WaveMaster 8 Zi-A Series can also be used in 224+ Gb/s (56+ Gbaud) DP-QPSK, 16-QAM optical transmission research.

The standard sample rate is 120 GS/s for 45 GHz bandwidth, 80 GS/s for 25 to 30 GHz bandwidths, and 40 GS/s on all 4 channels at 20 GHz bandwidth. For 4 to 20 GHz bandwidths, the standard sample rate is 40 GS/s on all four channels with an option to increase the sampling rate to 80 GS/s on two channels. All memory is available at full record lengths for analysis processing, 20 Mpts/ch is provided standard, with memory options up to 256 Mpts/ch available. In 120 and 80 GS/s mode, memory can be interleaved to 768 and 512 Mpts/ch.

The WaveMaster 8Zi-A models utilize second generation silicon germanium (SiGe) components to ensure high performance. SiGe is the most widely adopted and deployed semiconductor fabrication process with many years of commercial deployment. Additionally, it has none of the thermal conductivity, reliability, yield, cost and other concerns that captive in-house processes must contend with. LeCroy's 30 to 45 GHz 8Zi-A models make use of sixth generation Digital Bandwidth Interleave (DBI) to effectively and reliably extend bandwidth without the deleterious effects of bandwidth boosting.

LeCroy has designed the 8 Zi-A Series as a single hardware platform, supporting all nine models spanning from 4 to 45 GHz of bandwidth. This means engineers can leverage their investment and stay current with emerging high- speed technologies and serial data standards by purchasing only the bandwidth needed for current designs, and upgrading to additional bandwidth as needs change. Customers who had previously purchased an 8 Zi model can upgrade to 8 Zi-A performance and bandwidth.
Highest Performance 4-Channel Oscilloscope

The WaveMaster 820Zi-A model provides four channels at 20 GHz with exceptional performance and signal fidelity. The second generation SiGe chipset used in the 8Zi-A provides ample bandwidth out to 20 GHz without the need for the bandwidth boosting that is utilized on competitive products that are rated in hardware to 16 GHz and utilize digital signal processing (DSP) to excessively boost bandwidth. This type of bandwidth boost used by competitors carries significant signal fidelity penalties such as increased noise, increased jitter noise floor, excessive overshoot, and effective number of bits (ENOB) dropouts in the mid-bandwidth range. Conversely, the 820Zi-A model suffers from none of these phenomena and exhibits exceptional rise time, overshoot, noise, and jitter noise floor performance, including class leading total jitter noise floor of <190 fs rms.
World's Highest Bandwidth Real-Time Oscilloscope

With the launch of the WaveMaster 845Zi-A model, LeCroy again assumes bandwidth leadership in real-time oscilloscopes. The 845Zi-A uses proven, second generation SiGe track and hold and analog-to-digital (ADC) components to achieve exceptional performance. This unprecedented oscilloscope bandwidth is ideal for leading- edge research and development applications, especially in the optical market for high-speed next generation long-haul optical network development. In addition to the 45 GHz capability, the oscilloscope may also be operated in a 30 GHz / 2 channel or a 20 GHz / 4 channel mode. This gives flexibility to utilize multiple channels at 30 GHz or 20 GHz for timing validation while retaining the ability to utilize fewer channels for higher bandwidth signal fidelity measurements. The 20 GHz four channel rating of the 845Zi-A (and likewise, the 830Zi-A) has 25% more bandwidth compared to competitive offerings that reach to 30 GHz and only provide a four channel bandwidth of 16 GHz. Jitter Noise Floor at 45 GHz is an astounding 125 fs rms.

Maximum sample rate in single channel mode is 120 GS/s (45 GHz), with 80 GS/s and 40 GS/s operation in 2 channel (30 GHz) and 4 channel (20 GHz) modes respectively. Likewise, maximum analysis memory available is 768, 512, or 256 Megapoints/channel in 45, 30, and 20 GHz modes respectively.
LabMaster: New Family of Innovative, High-speed, Multi-channel Oscilloscope Modules

In addition to today's release of the WaveMaster 8 Zi-A oscilloscopes, LeCroy announces LabMaster, a new family of high-speed, multi-channel oscilloscope modules. LabMaster provides industry-leading capabilities of up to 5 synchronized channels with 45 GHz of bandwidth, up to 10 synchronized channels with 30 GHz of bandwidth, and up to 20 synchronized channels of up to 20 GHz of bandwidth. This new offering is aimed at designers of emerging high-speed multi-lane data communications systems.
Second Generation Enhancements Improve Test Capability

WaveMaster 8 Zi is known for fast analysis throughput, and WaveMaster 8 Zi-A significantly advances LeCroy’s analysis capabilities with additional processing power that further augments the X-Stream II Streaming Architecture. The Intel®Core™2 Quad processor rated at 3 GHz (with an effective 4 x 3 GHz = 12 GHz processing speed), 8 GB of RAM, and Windows 7 64-bit OS is standard. X-Stream II technology enables high throughput of data—even when the oscilloscope is analyzing 768 Mpt waveforms, by using variable waveform segment lengths to improve CPU cache memory efficiency resulting in 10 to 20 times faster processing compared to other oscilloscopes. The new processor is 20% faster than before, and is fully utilized by the X-Stream II architecture. Fittingly, standard memory on all 8 Zi-A oscilloscope models has been increased from 10 Mpt/Ch to 20 Mpt/Ch, and from 20 Mpt/Ch to 32 Mpt/Ch on the SDA and DDA models. The highest bandwidth SDA 845Zi-A model is standard with 96 Mpt/Ch of memory at 45 GHz!

WaveMaster 8 Zi-A deploys second generation silicon germanium (SiGe) chipsets to provide improved performance. Aside from increased bandwidth (20 GHz on four channels, mentioned earlier), the new second generation chips provide improved signal to noise performance of approximately 25% and establish a new performance baseline, particularly in the 820Zi-A (4 channel at 20 GHz) model.

Lastly, two distinguishing features of LeCroy oscilloscopes, the Jitter Timing and Analysis (JTA2) toolkit and our XDEV Advanced Developer's Toolkit are now standard in the 8 Zi-A models. The JTA2 toolkit contains several powerful tools, such as Track, that provides a graphical plot of a measurement parameter vs. time, and Histogram, that provides a graphical statistical view of measurement statistics. Track is especially helpful to understand measurement or jitter parameter variations over time so they may be compared with other time-correlated signals for debug of complex problems. Track can be used to the full record length of the oscilloscope, allowing millions of measurements to be measured and graphed over very long periods of time, which enables debug of very low frequency problems. This capability to measure and process and full record lengths is unique to LeCroy.