EEVblog 1545 - World's Fastest Oscilloscope, MXO4 TEARDOWN

[EEVblog]

The world's fastest oscilloscope, the Rohde & Schwarz MXO4 teardown!
Wow, this is an impressive beast in more ways than one.

https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/us/products/test-and-measurement/oscilloscopes/rs-mxo-4-oscilloscope_63493-1164992.html

ADC: https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/slvsdr3c/slvsdr3c.pdf
FPGA: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/amd-xilinx/XCZU7EG-1FBVB900I/7034695

[YurkshireLad]

When I first read the title, I thought it said "world's fastest teardown". Doh!

[SiliconWizard]

Great engineering!

[pdenisowski]

I've had an MXO4 longer than almost anyone and I learned a lot from that video   Great stuff!

And I also completely understand the joy in cutting through a "Calibration Void if Broken" sticker ...

[nctnico]

Nice! A bit surprising that the MXO4 uses off-the-shelve ADCs. Didn't expect that but if they do the job for the right price then why not.

[TheSteve]

It certainly was pretty inside. The only negative I really noticed was if you wanted to clean the dust off the fan - quite the disassembly required. Maybe R&S wants to trade one for my modified 1 GHz MSOX3024t. There aren't many things I'd trade my special scope for, but this is one of them.

[Fgrir]

Minor nitpick, but at 16:51 and 22:20 you circle 1K resistors and call them 1M.

But yeah, great teardown.  I need to find a project to justify this scope now.

[globoy]

This might be a naive question (I'm no metrologist) but does the 200 MHz version have entirely different electronics?  I ask because the price for the ADC and ZINQ chips from distribution are very pricey (at least in low qty) and more than the list price of that version of the scope.  Otherwise R&S must be getting a helluva price on those chips.

[Kleinstein]

Given that they still give the same 5 GS/s sampling rate the ADC is likely the same, maybe a slightly more noisy bin / grade.
For the ZINQ chip kind of has to be the same or they would need separate firmware.
The digikey price for such special parts with an expected downward trend in the price are rather inflated.

So R&S will earn way less money from the 200 MHz version - though it is still not a cheap scope.

[nctnico]

This might be a naive question (I'm no metrologist) but does the 200 MHz version have entirely different electronics?  I ask because the price for the ADC and ZINQ chips from distribution are very pricey (at least in low qty) and more than the list price of that version of the scope.  Otherwise R&S must be getting a helluva price on those chips.

You can get hefty discounts from Xilinx if you register the project and Xilinx deems you worthy.

[globoy]

Thanks.  If it is all the same electronics then one does wonder about hacking the 200 MHz version :-)

[SiliconWizard]

This might be a naive question (I'm no metrologist) but does the 200 MHz version have entirely different electronics?  I ask because the price for the ADC and ZINQ chips from distribution are very pricey (at least in low qty) and more than the list price of that version of the scope.  Otherwise R&S must be getting a helluva price on those chips.

You can get hefty discounts from Xilinx if you register the project and Xilinx deems you worthy.

Yes, and it's also obvious that they don't pay the ADCs 3000 bucks each.

[Martin72]

After the teardown Dave needed a cigarette I guess..
Beautiful inside...This is building quality at it´s best, fron this point of view, the scope´s entry-price is cheap.

This might be a naive question (I'm no metrologist) but does the 200 MHz version have entirely different electronics?

You can upgrade the 200Mhz up to 1.5Ghz just via license key, so the hardware is the same.
Buy the 200Mhz "cheapo" and hack it to 1.5Ghz..

[boB]

Isn't this scope faster than the MX04 ?

https://hackaday.com/2018/09/24/tearing-into-a-1-3-million-oscilloscope/

https://www.keysight.com/us/en/product/UXR1004A/infiniium-uxr-series-oscilloscope-100-ghz-4-channels.html

I thought that was the one you were talking about when I saw the title.


boB

[EEVblog]

You can get hefty discounts from Xilinx if you register the project and Xilinx deems you worthy.

Yes, and it's also obvious that they don't pay the ADCs 3000 bucks each.

Of course, but it's still funny.

[SiliconWizard]

You can get hefty discounts from Xilinx if you register the project and Xilinx deems you worthy.

Yes, and it's also obvious that they don't pay the ADCs 3000 bucks each.

Of course, but it's still funny.

Yes, you gotta wonder who is ever going to buy these at this price, so why bother displaying them in the catalog?
(If you're going to make prototypes you're probably still not going to buy them through this channel.)

[pdenisowski]

Isn't this scope faster than the MX04 ?

https://www.keysight.com/us/en/product/UXR1004A/infiniium-uxr-series-oscilloscope-100-ghz-4-channels.html

I thought that was the one you were talking about when I saw the title.

"Fastest" means "highest waveform update rate" (number of waveforms per second that can be acquired and displayed).  By that measure, the MXO4 is an order of magnitude faster than the UXR.

A lot of people think that sampling rate = speed but don't realize that most scopes actually discard a very large percentage of the samples they acquire and thus are "blind" most of the time. 

I did an entire video (which has also been turned into a whitepaper) on this topic:



A loose analogy:  a "fast" or "high speed" camera is one that acquires and stores a large number of frames per second, not one that has a very high number of pixels per frame.

[pdenisowski]

From Keysight's own whitepaper on the topic

"Waveform update rate can be extremely important when evaluating oscilloscopes for purchase. Although this specification is often overlooked, it can have a direct impact on your ability to capture a random and infrequent event which occurs just once in a million occurrences of your signal. There are three reasons why fast update rates are important for today’s oscilloscopes"

https://www.keysight.com/us/en/assets/7018-01745/white-papers/5989-7885.pdf

[Mechatrommer]

Isn't this scope faster than the MX04 ?
https://www.keysight.com/us/en/product/UXR1004A/infiniium-uxr-series-oscilloscope-100-ghz-4-channels.html

"Fastest" means "highest waveform update rate" (number of waveforms per second that can be acquired and displayed).  By that measure, the MXO4 is an order of magnitude faster than the UXR.

isnt fastest means "the highest fart count in a day"? it was in the dictionary of the future right?

[Fungus]

How much would it cost to manufacture a PCB of that size/complexity with that many components on it?

(I mean just pure manufacturing costs, ignoring the price of the components)

[boB]

From Keysight's own whitepaper on the topic

"Waveform update rate can be extremely important when evaluating oscilloscopes for purchase. Although this specification is often overlooked, it can have a direct impact on your ability to capture a random and infrequent event which occurs just once in a million occurrences of your signal. There are three reasons why fast update rates are important for today’s oscilloscopes"

https://www.keysight.com/us/en/assets/7018-01745/white-papers/5989-7885.pdf

I would still like to see the insides of a one $million dollar scope.   

Compared to $8000, there must be something interesting in there.

boB

[Detlev]

I would still like to see the insides of a one $million dollar scope.   

Compared to $8000, there must be something interesting in there.

boB

https://youtu.be/DXYje2B04xE

😎😉

[nctnico]

How much would it cost to manufacture a PCB of that size/complexity with that many components on it?

In volume: probably around $100 to $200 for placement costs. You'll only be paying for time needed by a P&P machine and it is not like the board is filled to the brim with components. The board is mostly green.

[julian1]

The bga footprints have exposed bottom-layer pads for probing. And in places, there are two traces routed between each pad.

[boB]

From Keysight's own whitepaper on the topic

"Waveform update rate can be extremely important when evaluating oscilloscopes for purchase. Although this specification is often overlooked, it can have a direct impact on your ability to capture a random and infrequent event which occurs just once in a million occurrences of your signal. There are three reasons why fast update rates are important for today’s oscilloscopes"

https://www.keysight.com/us/en/assets/7018-01745/white-papers/5989-7885.pdf

I guess it depends on your interpretation of "fast" then.   Evidently Keysight themselves said this....

"Keysight has introduced what is claims is the world’s fastest oscilloscope, operating at 256Gsample/s on signals up to 110GHz."

So, I guess you could take that either way.

I would think that rise and fall time might also be a factor that determines what you call faster or slower

boB