EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab

[Maxlor]

yes,  it does bug me about Rigol, that I have to call of tequipment.net and provide them with a blood sample and  beg them to send me the super secret firmware file to get updates for my Rigol gear.

Yes, that sucks big time. Rigol continue to not get this.
I've also heard that Rigol are losing some good people...

Huh, but Rigol's firmwares are right here, available for direct download: http://int.rigol.com/Support/SoftDownload/3

[AF6LJ]

Good interview Dave, and thank you Mr, Qin for taking the time to answer questions.
 

[pascal_sweden]

I really liked the structure of the interview and the type of questions.
All questions were really relevant and the order they were built up, worked very well!

Cool to hear that he started the company with fellow students.

Some questions unanswered

1. How did they come up with the name, and how long did it actually take them to come up with this name My guess is that Siglent comes from Signal and Intelligent.
But still would be nice to hear other alternatives that made the first rounds before they decided on the final name. Apparently the name took really off, as the sales increased after they moved from an OEM business model to a branded business model.

2. Easter eggs in Siglent products. Maybe the CEO put in some easter eggs himself in the first model.
Well, at least they had 2,5 years to add one in And maybe even today there are some easter eggs left in the newer products.

3. Financing. How they pulled this together in the very early days of the factory.
Did they go to several banks for getting a business loan. Insight on the process back then, and maybe also some insights on the business climate in China today. Do they have incubators in China today? Is it as easy as in the US today or at least similar? Silicon valley spirit, Stealth phase approach, etc.

4. Siglent's take on High-Level-Synthesis and an "All-in-C" based design flow, where the hardware logic is not written in VHDL by hardware engineers, but developed by software engineers, who synthesize the high-level source code into RTL.

5. Siglent's take on Xilinx Zynq 7000 series (inspired by GW-Instek in Taiwan).

6. Engineering education in China. If the amount of engineering students is increasing. Popular engineering schools. Competition between universities in research papers. In Europe some countries are facing challenges as number of engineering students is declining: "Everybody likes an iPhone, but nobody likes to make one".

7. Factory tour in Siglent. Would be cool if this can be organized. To get a glimpse of how scopes are put together. There is a guy on Internet who does lots of these factory tours for Android tablet devices (armdevices.net). Still AFAIK I have not seen a factory tour of a Chinese scope factory.

8. Where does Siglent buy their relative silent fans? Apparently they know, and maybe if they reveal, someone can pass the address on to Rigol And Where does Siglent buy the factory-remove screen protectors? Rigol should have them on their screens as well

9. Siglent's view on having a video output connector on test equipment. Why not have an HDMI connector on the oscilloscope and the spectrum analyzer. Or both VGA and HDMI to support older video projectors in the class room.

10. Licensing. Whether Siglent licenses some SW libraries and IP from other companies (algorithms, RTL IP blocks, patents on signal processing, interleaving methods, etc.) in their products?

11. Spectrum analyzer. Do they sell them in Europe? I could not find on their website.

Maybe these questions can be answered in a follow-up interview, or can be addressed by email exchange between the Australian interviewer (aka Dave) and the Chinese CEO (aka Yolo)

[Macbeth]

Making a courtesy visit helps to keep up appearances but doesn't solve the underlying issues. By having their CEO visit Dave Siglent did nothing to improve their products and yet people are cheering  Come on guys don't get fooled by seeing shiny beads and mirrors!!

As I remember the visit had been arranged well before the ebay shenanigans. So good on Eric to come and face the music, and Dave for not glossing over it. Many others CEO's would have found "other pressing engagements" and called off the interview...

I'm surprised he didn't stay in sunny Sydney for a couple of days touristy stuff though. I guess a CEO's got stuff to do...

[TrioTest]

As I remember the visit had been arranged well before the ebay shenanigans. So good on Eric to come and face the music, and Dave for not glossing over it. Many others CEO's would have found "other pressing engagements" and called off the interview...

I'm surprised he didn't stay in sunny Sydney for a couple of days touristy stuff though. I guess a CEO's got stuff to do...

Eric only had a few hours spare on Sunday afternoon. We had a quick drive west on the M4 and up the hills to Euroka Clearing in the Blue Mountains National Park.  Steve from Siglent USA had just got off his flight a few hours earlier so we needed to keep them awake to get over the jet lag.  We did some sight-seeing and had a traditional Aussie picnic.  The new SDS2304X was well received by the locals in the National Park too.

[RupertGo]

"9. Siglent's view on having a video output connector on test equipment. Why not have an HDMI connector on the oscilloscope and the spectrum analyzer. Or both VGA and HDMI to support older video projectors in the class room."

It has other implications. My eyes have gone south recently, and I have a lot of difficulty using my (Rigol) spectrum analyser. A decent video out would mean I could easily see stuff on my very large, very bright LCD monitor - it would make all the difference. It can't be a cost consideration, given the very slight incremental price of including the facility and the amount of excellent, expensive engineering elsewhere, it has to be a marketing thing. But for me, and for lots of other people, it's a really painful omission.

[jeremy]

Peeked on the chinese site.
Price starts at 36800 CNY ==> 5740,- USD.
Not exactly a bargain...
We know the "buck", I´m curious about the "bang".

Damn. Looks like a really nice instrument, but that's definitely outside my meagre price range. Especially considering you can get the tektronix mdo3000 with 3Ghz of spectrum analyser for US$3500 at the moment.

[EEVblog]

Subtitles done. Feel free to download+reupload this file:
https://d021f53d417bdbead8f79d798c829256b10814be-www.googledrive.com/host/0B5IYGuAp9xz6VE95UUJURHRReWs/eevblog826.srt

Thanks guys. Upload done.

[EEVblog]

This is quite a coup for EEVBlog - CEOs from anywhere don't tend to do this, unless it's with the big guys and rarely even then.

Keysight invited me to the US (paid for) to tour their facility and blog it and interview people etc, and I asked if the CEO would like to be interviewed. They went and asked and got a big fat NOPE. Only did interviews for Fortune 500 or *insert big name here*. I wasn't even on the radar.

[EEVblog]

I didn't watch the entire interview but any word about their firmware department? Having a few engineers try to train people who are fresh from school is a recipe for dissaster.

They have about 50 people (half their R&D staff on software/firmware)

[EEVblog]

I really liked the structure of the interview and the type of questions.
All questions were really relevant and the order they were built up, worked very well!

*phew*
Because I just made them up on the fly after I hit record!

3. Financing. How they pulled this together in the very early days of the factory.

Completely forgot that one, good question, as are the others.

[EEVblog]

Making a courtesy visit helps to keep up appearances but doesn't solve the underlying issues. By having their CEO visit Dave Siglent did nothing to improve their products and yet people are cheering  Come on guys don't get fooled by seeing shiny beads and mirrors!!

As I remember the visit had been arranged well before the ebay shenanigans.

Correct, its been on the cards way before that incident.

[gardner]

Do we know if Siglent does their own manufacturing or uses contract manufacturers?  I would kind of assume contract, but for test instruments quality could be an issue. 

[Smokey]

Thanks for the subtitles.  I have an especially hard time with the Chinese accent. 

Thanks for the interview.  It would have been nice if he had elaborated on what metrics he's using by saying they are the #2 test equipment company and want to be #1.  That's great to say that and all but Siglent is not Keysight or Keithley/Tek/Fluke or Lecroy.  Yes I do realize some of those companies re-badged Siglent stuff but it's not their flagships by a very wide margin.  Making general claims like that without qualifying them is a little dishonest in my opinion.  He's an engineer and he should know that the details matter.

(Bear with me here.  I promise I'm not making fun of him.  I swear)

At around 30:35 he said the phrase....
"... some young guy"
and I just about laughed myself to death.
It only would have been better if he had said "won hwung lo"

[6581]

Thank you for the subtitles. Finally I can understand what the Aussie interviewer is saying. 

Great interview. Balanced questions, interesting topics. Some of the questions touched areas where I wasn't expecting an answer and still Mr. Eric Qin showed openness (some companies wouldn't probably reveal number of R&D for example), and was altogether close to ground - proud of his company in a very subtly humble way. Definitely improved my respect to this company.

Thank you Dave & especially your honor quest, Mr. Eric Qin.

[EEVblog]

Do we know if Siglent does their own manufacturing or uses contract manufacturers?  I would kind of assume contract, but for test instruments quality could be an issue.

I asked this afterwards.
PCB assembly is done outside, but everything else in in-house. System assembly, test ,programming, calibration, packaging etc.

[coppice]

Do we know if Siglent does their own manufacturing or uses contract manufacturers?  I would kind of assume contract, but for test instruments quality could be an issue.

If you want the best quality board assembly its best to go to people who do nothing but board assembly, and have a reputation for good results. They deal with the volumes needed to achieve the polish and consistency you are looking for. In test equipment manufacture you won't.

[photon]

This is quite a coup for EEVBlog - CEOs from anywhere don't tend to do this, unless it's with the big guys and rarely even then.

Keysight invited me to the US (paid for) to tour their facility and blog it and interview people etc, and I asked if the CEO would like to be interviewed. They went and asked and got a big fat NOPE. Only did interviews for Fortune 500 or *insert big name here*. I wasn't even on the radar.

I doubt the Keysight CEO is anywhere near Qin as regards technical chops.

[EEVblog]

If you want the best quality board assembly its best to go to people who do nothing but board assembly, and have a reputation for good results. They deal with the volumes needed to achieve the polish and consistency you are looking for.

That's exactly what Eric said. They work with a huge volume high tech assembler that knows how to do a quality job consistently.

[coppice]

Do we know if Siglent does their own manufacturing or uses contract manufacturers?  I would kind of assume contract, but for test instruments quality could be an issue.

So far I have never heard any Chinese electronics companies, except for these super factories like Foxconn, make their PCBs in house.

PCB production line requires very high production volume to maintain profitable.

And, even with cheap and not so well controlled PCB outsourcing, product quality won't suffer much as long as you do not go to many gigahertz.

For high frequency applications, most large PCB fabs offer Rogers substrate and electropolished impedance controlled trace, as well as other advanced processes.

You need to look around China more. Assembling boards in house is pretty common, and often doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If the volumes aren't high enough the boards end up being hand assembled, because fully automated lines are impractical for anything but high volumes. Rising costs are changing things, and even a lot of highly automated assembly is being driven out of China to Vietnam and other countries. However, right now you can still find lots of low to medium volume in house assembly work in China.

[nctnico]

Making a courtesy visit helps to keep up appearances but doesn't solve the underlying issues. By having their CEO visit Dave Siglent did nothing to improve their products and yet people are cheering  Come on guys don't get fooled by seeing shiny beads and mirrors!!

As I remember the visit had been arranged well before the ebay shenanigans.

Correct, its been on the cards way before that incident.

IMHO the Ebay incident is just one of many incidents. The biggest issue Siglent has is with the firmware hence my question on how Siglent is going to improve that. As Wuerstchenhund already noted: Siglent isn't a new kid on the block and in the interview the CEO also told they had to work 5 times longer on their first oscilloscope than they expected so it is really hard to defend why they have neglected their firmware department so much. The CEO knows firmware takes long and yet he has not taken proper action.

[Gabri74]

At one time he mentioned that they are using Linux in some of their products,
but I can't find any reference to this nor any link to source code in their site.
Maybe my google-fu is not strong enough...
It would be really interesting to see what kernel and rootfs the are using...

[Richard Crowley]

The firmware is quite a large part of the value of the goods.
Why would we expect that they would reveal the source code? 
It isn't advertised as Open Source in any way, is it?

[@rt]

Hats off. I’m impressed.

They need an artist. The stuff on the bench looks unrelated to each other.
Give me his number and I’ll fix it for them.
This is how to make a bunch of equipment that belongs together.
http://www.yaesu-museum.com/a_ja6nka-yaesu.jpg

[Macbeth]

PCB assembly is done outside, but everything else in in-house. System assembly, test ,programming, calibration, packaging etc.

Who gets the most important job of all - rubbing part numbers from the ICs? Is that out sourced or due to its sensitive nature kept in house? Is there a job description in China for "Parts obfuscator" and is there training on how to do this effectively? Perhaps apprenticeships or vocational qualifications?