Event identification software

It what it claims is an industry first, Agilent Technologies has introduced an event identification software that allows digital designers that use Infiniium oscilloscopes to identify signal integrity issues found in electronic designs.

According to Agilent, InfiniiScan software works by scanning through thousands of acquired waveforms per second and then isolating anomalous signal behavior.

David Churchill, vice president and general manager of Agilent's Design Validation division, said InfiniiScan moves an oscilloscope closer to the ideal of a 'find problem' button, "InfiniiScan identifies signal integrity issues that were previously difficult or impossible to find with traditional hardware triggering or deep memory approaches," Churchill said. "This software is a valuable addition to any digital designer's toolbox for many oscilloscope applications."

Agilent said engineers have traditionally relied on hardware triggering and deep memory to capture elusive signal anomalies in their designs. But, the company said, hardware triggering systems have several limitations, including the number of events that can be monitored simultaneously, the number of occurrences of that event that can be identified and the variety of events that can be identified.

According to Agilent, InfiniiScan overcomes these limitations by automatically inspecting each signal it acquires, then informing the user of any potential signal integrity issues it discovers. InfiniiScan enables digital designers to monitor up to five different events or the same event on four channels simultaneously, the company said.

InfiniiScan can isolate events as narrow as 70 picoseconds, Agilent said, far narrower well beyond the 300-picosecond limitation of hardware-based approaches. The software also scans waveforms automatically and is able to identify a single waveform anomaly out of 10,000 screens of data without requiring programming, according to the company.