Video Teardown & Experiements with LeCroy's 100GHz, 240GS/s Scope

[Hugoneus]

Here is a close look and teardown (yes! teardown!) of LeCroy's 100GHz Scope. We also go in details of its operation, block diagrams and ASIC design challenges.

Watch the video here: [1 Hour & 35 Minutes]
http://youtu.be/U3w_EWgGQuk

More videos at The Signal Path:
http://www.TheSignalPath.com

[vaualbus]

Just two word: Wow and fantastic.

[Hugoneus]

Just two word: Wow and fantastic.

Glad that you liked it.

[CosPhi]

Thank's for this great video. Special the first part when the guy explained the frontend on the whiteboard.

Also the second part with the boards review. I was surprised to see at least 9 trimpots on the 100Gig board 

The third parts with the running instrument was nice too. But as already HF stuff itself wouldn't confuse me sometimes ... now we have laser ... 194THz has to be a kind of infrared laser. I didn't know it is possible to shift the frequency for a laser that easy. I guess that would be an topic for an future Signalpath blog too. I did read lately an article about a laboratory where they push the data rate over fibre rate ... kind of sick.

The last part was nice to see too. I thought the factory (just assembling) would be bigger. And I was surprised about how much and long they test each unit. And I was surprised people don't wear ear protection.

Thank's a lot for this video. 

[EEVblog]

Haven't watched it all through yet, but   

[Hugoneus]

Haven't watched it all through yet, but   

Thanks Dave! Let me know what you think about it.

[EEVblog]

Was very kind of Lecroy to let you in to shoot all that too, and give access to the designer. They are obviously very proud of their products and capability.
BTW, Chris met Mr Lecroy the other week, and didn't even think to ask him onto the Amp Hour! 

[4cx10000]

WOW, like someone else wrote! Great video and thanks for asking all the questions which clarified things even more! Excellent and very interesting! 

[Hugoneus]

Was very kind of Lecroy to let you in to shoot all that too, and give access to the designer. They are obviously very proud of their products and capability.
BTW, Chris met Mr Lecroy the other week, and didn't even think to ask him onto the Amp Hour! 

Doh!

[nixfu]

Getting ready to watch video now.

I assume this is done with using a very powerful ADC to simultaneously sample the entire DC-xGHz spectrum all at once in real time?

[electr_peter]

100GHz and 240GS/s - that is 1000 times more BW and 240 times faster sampling than 100MHz 1GS/s scope. It is a fantastic technological achievement. I hope they can achieve 1 THz BW one day - but it is getting harder and harder to climb in frequency.

On the other hand it is not 100GHz scope in all parameters - it is more like 33GHz trigger + 100GHz BW + fast sampling system. It lacks some capabilities over full BW if compared to 33GHz scopes. Still very useful for a niche applications.

Maybe there are experts on rigid/semi rigid coax cables in this forum? What do you think of internal cabling/setup on the front end? To me it seems that setup can be improved and made more integrated/compact. Sampling board looks very nicely laid out and clean in comparison.

[Hugoneus]

100GHz and 240GS/s - that is 1000 times more BW and 240 times faster sampling than 100MHz 1GS/s scope. It is a fantastic technological achievement. I hope they can achieve 1 THz BW one day - but it is getting harder and harder to climb in frequency.
On the other hand it is not 100GHz scope in all parameters - it is more like 33GHz trigger + 100GHz BW + fast sampling system. It lacks some capabilities over full BW if compared to 33GHz scopes. Still very useful for a niche applications.
Maybe there are experts on rigid/semi rigid coax cables in this forum? What do you think of internal cabling/setup on the front end? To me it seems that setup can be improved and made more integrated/compact. Sampling board looks very nicely laid out and clean in comparison.

They have lots of room inside the unit so they have not gone through the trouble of making very crammed together cables. They use rigid cables where phase stability is critical and of course calibrate everything. The microwave switches are used for calibration and signal path switching. These portions are laid out like a spectrum analyzer.

[jimon]

Crazy & wow, hope more and more companies will provide edge tech for teardowns just as part of marketing campaigns

[daqq]

Wow!!! Thanks!

[Wuerstchenhund]

I also haven't had the time to watch all of it but yes, very well done!

I usually don't watch a lot video reviews, and quite frankly think that most of them are poor to crap. But your's really stand out. You're presenting very well, you're speaking clearly and fluent, the videos are well structured, and most of all you know your shit. I knew LeCroy made the right decision when they invited you took at their stuff.

The only thing I would have to criticize on your video is the segment where the scope theory was presented on the whiteboard. The audio level difference between you and the presenter was pretty large, which required turning the volume up to understand him (just barely), just to have you screaming at me one moment later  Maybe in such situation you could work with an external mic which is placed in the middle between yourself and the other presenter(s), which would provide an more equal audio level. There's also software that can equalize voice, which I think would be good for that segment.

But aside that, very well done! Hopefully they'll give you more stuff to review in the future!

[SimonD]

WOWWW !!!
absolutely impresive !
food for the eyes ... not for ordinary mortals! 

[BFX]

hmm next piece of equipment for my hobby 
I'll probably have to broken my ceramic piggy bank 

PS: Good job Hugoneus 

[jimon]

Watched, extremely nice But mystery is still there - nobody showed how their best in the world (?) ASIC's looks like

I have a question, so looks like Keysight do ADC interleaving on their 63 GHz/160 GS/s scope, with super complicated time reference (and right tongue angle ) and LeCroy went for bandwidth splitting for some reason (easier to build ? more compact ?). So will it be possible for Keysight to use their interleaving approach if they will boost total ADC's up to 240+ GS/s ? Or interleaving approach is limited by some physical/engineering limitation ?

PS. Part when you tweak 194.050 THz to 194.100 THz is silly from marketing perspective IMHO, it's like showing "yay our scope can go from 0.0 to 0.1 "

[rx8pilot]

The only thing more impressive than the scope, is actually NEEDING a scope like that.

Very small market for a 7 figure ultra-exotic! Nuts.

[vaualbus]

Watched, extremely nice But mystery is still there - nobody showed how their best in the world (?) ASIC's looks like

I have a question, so looks like Keysight do ADC interleaving on their 63 GHz/160 GS/s scope, with super complicated time reference (and right tongue angle ) and LeCroy went for bandwidth splitting for some reason (easier to build ? more compact ?). So will it be possible for Keysight to use their interleaving approach if they will boost total ADC's up to 240+ GS/s ? Or interleaving approach is limited by some physical/engineering limitation ?

PS. Part when you tweak 194.050 THz to 194.100 THz is silly from marketing perspective IMHO, it's like showing "yay our scope can go from 0.0 to 0.1 "

Ya I was wandering about agile also. But agilent use their real edge technology that unfortunally is not described in the servie manual.
So I think they do almost the same think, downconvert the signal and than send it to 2 of the 4 board to be digitazed.
Next time a tour at Agilent! when the next 63+Ghz scope will released. Ah Ah.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I was waiting for you to ask what the 20x100Ghz configuration would cost...

[c4757p]

I was waiting for you to ask what the 20x100Ghz configuration would cost...

Can't. They haven't invented a number for it yet.

[Hugoneus]

vaualbus, jimon,

Let me clarify a few things which you kindly brought up.

The Keysight 62GHz scope uses essentially the same technique for conversion. Their ReadEdge system is a diplexer, filter and dual-band down-converter. This can be inferred from their frequency planning and block diagrams, even though they don't directly mention it.

The two laser experiment is a very important test. (I was not going to let them get away with a cheesy test!)  O0 When you beat two lasers together in a PD (in non-linear detection) you get a beat frequency which is the difference between the two tones (You also get the sum, but that is huge). So in this case we are first beating a 194THz laser with a 194.05THz laser which would produce an electrical tone at 50GHz. By increasing the second laser to 194.1THz, we produce an electrical tone at 100GHz! The scope then digitizes this electrical tone which is at the edge of its bandwidth. I hope this is more clear now. 

[w2aew]

Getting ready to watch video now.

I assume this is done with using a very powerful ADC to simultaneously sample the entire DC-xGHz spectrum all at once in real time?

No, as you'll see, it splits the signal into three bands, down converts the mid and upper bands, then samples each of these three paths with parallel 36GHz BW channels, and uses DSP to reassemble it all. Each 36GHz channel is 80GS/s which is formed by interleaving 5GS/s ADCs.

[w2aew]

Watched, extremely nice But mystery is still there - nobody showed how their best in the world (?) ASIC's looks like

I have a question, so looks like Keysight do ADC interleaving on their 63 GHz/160 GS/s scope, with super complicated time reference (and right tongue angle ) and LeCroy went for bandwidth splitting for some reason (easier to build ? more compact ?). So will it be possible for Keysight to use their interleaving approach if they will boost total ADC's up to 240+ GS/s ? Or interleaving approach is limited by some physical/engineering limitation ?

PS. Part when you tweak 194.050 THz to 194.100 THz is silly from marketing perspective IMHO, it's like showing "yay our scope can go from 0.0 to 0.1 "

Keysight also uses Frequency interleaving to get their 63 GHz real edge channel, for the same reason that LECroy does.

[jimon]

Hugoneus, w2aew,

Thanks for explanation

[miguelvp]

Very nice and concise for all the information presented. Even if it was a long video it was well organized and to the point.

[Radio Tech]

I had to sit up late to watch tis one. Great video   

[KF5OBS]

BTW, Chris met Mr Lecroy the other week, and didn't even think to ask him onto the Amp Hour! 

Do you want me to ask him if he wants to be on the Amp Hour?

[HighVoltage]

I really enjoyed the factory tour at the end of your video.
It was also interesting to see that LeCroy is using lots of Agilent gear.

You should do the same with Keysight and show us a really good factory tour of the Keysight production facilities.

[Wuerstchenhund]

It was also interesting to see that LeCroy is using lots of Agilent gear.

What else should they use? LeCroy doesn't do RF generators and other such kit themselves, and for that stuff Agilent/Keysight gear is probably the best you can get.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Would have been interesting to see what they used to cal the 100GHz version

[janoc]

vaualbus, jimon,

Let me clarify a few things which you kindly brought up.

The Keysight 62GHz scope uses essentially the same technique for conversion. Their ReadEdge system is a diplexer, filter and dual-band down-converter. This can be inferred from their frequency planning and block diagrams, even though they don't directly mention it.

The two laser experiment is a very important test. (I was not going to let them get away with a cheesy test!)  O0 When you beat two lasers together in a PD (in non-linear detection) you get a beat frequency which is the difference between the two tones (You also get the sum, but that is huge). So in this case we are first beating a 194THz laser with a 194.05THz laser which would produce an electrical tone at 50GHz. By increasing the second laser to 194.1THz, we produce an electrical tone at 100GHz! The scope then digitizes this electrical tone which is at the edge of its bandwidth. I hope this is more clear now. 

Mindblowing stuff, thanks for this video! 

[Hugoneus]

Would have been interesting to see what they used to cal the 100GHz version

Unfortunately I could not film that. Even a small conversation we had about it had to be cut out of the video. They wish to keep it confidential.

[andrija]

That board with those heatsinks and memory modules is one of the most beautiful pieces of electronics I have ever seen. It's beautiful. It looks like a work of art.

[rx8pilot]

That board with those heatsinks and memory modules is one of the most beautiful pieces of electronics I have ever seen. It's beautiful. It looks like a work of art.

Yes, I was stunned by the component count. I think he said 15,000 components! Wonder what the reject rate is on the PCB's? ....and the extreme cost of the silicon would make the build process the most nerving moment I could think of.

It doesn't just have to work - it has to work perfect. It seems that the slightest oops would disable a PCB worth $100k+ Kinda nuts.

[bktemp]

The acquisition board is relly a great piece of art!
I am a bit surprised they have used 5 independent power supplies on the board. A lot of point of load converters make sense, but different power supplies make a design normally much more difficult, because if one power supply fails the unpowered parts can easily get damaged when input signals from the powered sections are still active.
On this board it seems the 4 channels are completely seperate. The 5th power supply is probably for the trigger and control circuit.

[Dongulus]

After watching the video, I wanted to find a little more information about the Teledyne LeCroy's DBI processing technique. I found this paper which offers more detail about how the DBI system works, a bit the design of the input amplifier for the MSH (monolithic sample and hold), and how the digital processing works.

[chicken]

It doesn't just have to work - it has to work perfect. It seems that the slightest oops would disable a PCB worth $100k+ Kinda nuts.

100% agree, but not perfect... I wonder how it feels to put a soldering iron onto that PCB

[IanB]

100% agree, but not perfect... I wonder how it feels to put a soldering iron onto that PCB

I hope that's a bodge wire and not a botch wire 

(A bodge is a fix, while a botch is a screw up.)

[EEVblog]

It doesn't just have to work - it has to work perfect. It seems that the slightest oops would disable a PCB worth $100k+ Kinda nuts.

I've worked on boards like that, and it is a very time consuming and expensive process. Things like first doing a trial place/reflow solder run with identical packages but with much cheaper parts, just to test there are no reflow issues, and then you have a cheaper physical sample to work from as a mechanical sample.
And then once assembled with real parts (triple checked and signed off at each stage) you'll do anything to salvage a board that has issues. So hand reworks are not uncommon.
Wasting countless multi-thousand dollar blank boards for all sorts of tasks and checks is commonplace.
If you find a design flaw, it's actually a cheaper and safer option to mod the boards than to go re-spin and re-qualify a board, so quite common to find mod wires and bodged chips and parts.
Extensive built in testing is half of the design process.
It can take a year or more to get one of these boards into production.

[rx8pilot]

Management has nerves of steel to commit to projects like this. To have that much time and effort packed into a single PCB (which is only part of the system). I would imagine that just defining the PCB qualification parameters is a massive job in itself. My only reference is in aerospace mechanics where the designs are certainly complicated, but the process of determining the tolerances allowed can be even more complicated. They have to balance performance specs with physical manufacturing limitations. For the work I did with NASA, we would see that when a part is impossible to manufacture, they would invent an all new machine, material, or process to make it. $$ values were as out of this world as the spacecraft they make.

LeCroy had to learn some special tricks to pull this off. So impressed with that level of dedication.

[Hugoneus]

Dave knows a lot about PCB manufacturing and qualification so I'll just echo his words. I also suspect that they have a way of testing the boards before the main ADCs are attached to it, to make sure all is good before the 4 THA and 8 ADCs are added.

[rx8pilot]

Dave knows a lot about PCB manufacturing and qualification so I'll just echo his words. I also suspect that they have a way of testing the boards before the main ADCs are attached to it, to make sure all is good before the 4 THA and 8 ADCs are added.

The custom chips are escorted by an elite security team and transported in an armored car. 

[electr_peter]

How many layers does ADC board have? I would guess at least 8-10.
Also, how did they produced that metal PCB frame? Casting or CNC only? Seems to be very big, but narrow part.

[EEVblog]

I also suspect that they have a way of testing the boards before the main ADCs are attached to it, to make sure all is good before the 4 THA and 8 ADCs are added.

Quite likely.
Wouldn't be hard (in the scheme of things) to build in a board level data connection (via pads or connector). Keeping signal integrity is the tricky part.
Alternatively dummy data (not real time of course) could be fed in via JTAG boundary scan.
In fact this board could have one kick-arse boundry scan system in place.

[electr_peter]

One thing I really like about such scope is that it is pushing the limits. It gets to 100 GHz, but just barely (almost all aspects are pushed to the limit, only extensive DSP corrections helps to keep it in one piece). I am sure a small amount of tweaking could bring another GHz or so for current model and future versions will be even better.

It is certainly not the case of having 200 GHz BW scope and configuring it via some jumpers to "entry range" 100 GHz BW version.

[Len]

I hope you took that optical receiver with you when you left! I'd love to see a teardown and explanation of that. How does it mix the lasers? How does it convert the resulting optical signal to an electrical signal?

[CosPhi]

Yes, wonder also a bit about how this laser stuff works

[Hugoneus]

The heterodyne conversion of the two lasers does not happen in the optical domain. It happens in the electrical domain. There are ways to mix light in a non-linear fashion directly in the optical domain, but that is not what is happening here.

The photo detector is only sensitive to the light signal intensity and it operates in square law detection mode. The two lasers illuminate the photo detector at the same time and the beat frequency is generated already in the electrical domain (constructive and destructive addition of light on the surface of the detector).

There are limitations however, for example the two lasers can't be orthogonal in polarization.

[rx8pilot]

Shahriar.....

Kindly install a PCI bus connection on your head so I can download your brain.

[w2aew]

The heterodyne conversion of the two lasers does not happen in the optical domain. It happens in the electrical domain. There are ways to mix light in a non-linear fashion directly in the optical domain, but that is not what is happening here.

The photo detector is only sensitive to the light signal intensity and it operates in square law detection mode. The two lasers illuminate the photo detector at the same time and the beat frequency is generated already in the electrical domain (constructive and destructive addition of light on the surface of the detector).

There are limitations however, for example the two lasers can't be orthogonal in polarization.

The beauty of square-law detection - mixing products for free (basically).

[Hugoneus]

How many layers does ADC board have? I would guess at least 8-10.
Also, how did they produced that metal PCB frame? Casting or CNC only? Seems to be very big, but narrow part.

The board is 28 layers. The frame I think is CNC.

[vaualbus]

Ok so my comment on youtube about the price of the board have to be modify. This can cost a fortune (surly more than 5k) also why soo many layer? a lot of digital signals?
 I have never  hear  about 28 a layer board before! Amazing.
So do you know if keysighy is keysight is developing a scope for that range of frequency?
also at the beging the guy that explain the theory said that there are company made these oscilloscope. Keysight lecroy and tektronix right? Because the top model of tek scope go up to about 30ghz

[coppice]

One thing I really like about such scope is that it is pushing the limits. It gets to 100 GHz, but just barely (almost all aspects are pushed to the limit, only extensive DSP corrections helps to keep it in one piece). I am sure a small amount of tweaking could bring another GHz or so for current model and future versions will be even better.

It is certainly not the case of having 200 GHz BW scope and configuring it via some jumpers to "entry range" 100 GHz BW version.

Why do you say "just barely"? It gets to 100GHz by old and well tried techniques, implemented with state of the art hardware. It will be a lot quirkier than a straightforward monolithic ADC. Anything large has thermal tracking issues, and anything that that many separate parts working in concert is going to have calibration issues. The calibration can be handled very well by modern approaches.

They make a 100GHz oscilloscope because that's what the optical people (who are the main market) want. If the optical people say they need 200GHz or 300GHz and have the budget, LeCroy should have no problems extending the current design to those bandwidths. Beyond 300GHz  or so life starts to get more interesting. :-)

[EEVblog]

Ok so my comment on youtube about the price of the board have to be modify. This can cost a fortune (surly more than 5k) also why soo many layer? a lot of digital signals?
 I have never  hear  about 28 a layer board before! Amazing.

At these sorts of rates signal integrity is everything. That happens best with ground planes and lots of them.
Then you have the huge BGA parts that need fanning out.
You also have huge power requirements whcih also calls for many power planes, and there will be many power rails, 5 or 6 power rails in a high speed digital domain is not uncommon.
Fanning out a big arse BGA package usually takes 6-8 signal layers, and if you whack a ground plane between each one of them, that's 16 layers right there off the bat. Add another half dozen for big power rails and misc routing and you can start to see how you might need 28 layers.

[Wuerstchenhund]

So do you know if keysighy is keysight is developing a scope for that range of frequency?

They are probably trying, but I doubt we will see anything like that from Keysight for the next 5 years or so.

And if they finally come out with their own 100GHz scope it probably will be a (non-expandable) 4 channel scope that only reaches 100GHz on one or two channels only.

LeCroy's LabMaster 10-100ZI can provide up to twenty 100GHz channels or up to eighty 36GHz channels. Even aside from the huge bandwidth, the LabMaster is a complete different beast than anything that is offered by Keysight or Tek.

also at the beging the guy that explain the theory said that there are company made these oscilloscope. Keysight lecroy and tektronix right? Because the top model of tek scope go up to about 30ghz

He said that there are only three manufacturers of High Speed Oscilloscopes (i.e. oscilloscopes with high sample rates of 40GSa/s or more), which are LeCroy, Keysight and Tek.

Tek has been stuck at 33GHz for some time while LeCroy and later Agilent made the jump to 65GHz and (in case of LeCroy) now 100GHz, and it's unlikely that will change anytime soon.

[rx8pilot]

Ok so my comment on youtube about the price of the board have to be modify. This can cost a fortune (surly more than 5k) also why soo many layer? a lot of digital signals?
 I have never  hear  about 28 a layer board before! Amazing.

At these sorts of rates signal integrity is everything. That happens best with ground planes and lots of them.
Then you have the huge BGA parts that need fanning out.
You also have huge power requirements whcih also calls for many power planes, and there will be many power rails, 5 or 6 power rails in a high speed digital domain is not uncommon.
Fanning out a big arse BGA package usually takes 6-8 signal layers, and if you whack a ground plane between each one of them, that's 16 layers right there off the bat. Add another half dozen for big power rails and misc routing and you can start to see how you might need 28 layers.

I have never done a layer count like that but I remember talking to an engineering group doing some very high speed layout in the neighborhood of 28 layers. One interesting comment they made was that the PCB yield was rather low. The very fine traces mixed with blind and buried vias apparently get s very difficult to manufacture. It only takes one via (out of 10's of thousands) that does not make contact to make a rainy day. If the via is buried, or its a critical path, there may be no bodge wire option.

[VK5RC]

Thanks Shariar and Lecroy,  I liked the rf deck,  those connectors and lines are very special,  coax over 20GHz is pretty special, phase,  impedance matching,  was the figure below 50 fS? Light travels just ^0.1mm. Thanks

[electr_peter]

One thing I really like about such scope is that it is pushing the limits. It gets to 100 GHz, but just barely (almost all aspects are pushed to the limit, only extensive DSP corrections helps to keep it in one piece). I am sure a small amount of tweaking could bring another GHz or so for current model and future versions will be even better.
It is certainly not the case of having 200 GHz BW scope and configuring it via some jumpers to "entry range" 100 GHz BW version.

Why do you say "just barely"? It gets to 100GHz by old and well tried techniques, implemented with state of the art hardware. It will be a lot quirkier than a straightforward monolithic ADC. Anything large has thermal tracking issues, and anything that that many separate parts working in concert is going to have calibration issues. The calibration can be handled very well by modern approaches.

I mean to say that this scope is using many of components to the max specs while components are high speced to begin with. Not much headroom is left. Paper linked in this thread also shows that frequency response starts to roll of at higher frequencies. Triggering is harder to implement because of many steps involved in analog->digital path.

One of the main problems is a low BW and low sampling rate of ADCs. They solved it by interleaving multiple ADCs. BW limitations of ADC is solved by interleaving splitted and downconverted frequency bands. You can call this solution quicker than new high BW ADC but I think it is a bypass of current ADC limitations to get to full 100 GHz BW.

They make a 100GHz oscilloscope because that's what the optical people (who are the main market) want. If the optical people say they need 200GHz or 300GHz and have the budget, LeCroy should have no problems extending the current design to those bandwidths. Beyond 300GHz  or so life starts to get more interesting. :-)

100 GHz version is made because they can do it, they need to compete and innovate, it is needed for industry and research applications. I have no doubts that slightly higher BW version can be made with similar architecture, but it will be more and more difficult for them because of front end limitations.

Do you think they can make 200 GHz scope by using two 100 GHz scopes and using similar frequency splitting technique? I don't think it is possible now, more R&D is needed to boost front end BW.

[Hugoneus]

There are some other practical problems in terms of getting signals into the instrument as well. 1mm connectors are rated to 110GHz, above that Anritsu has proprietary 0.9 ~ 0.8mm connectors up to 140GHz. After that, you are no longer in coax, you are in waveguide which of course is banded...

Regardless, electro-optics don't have 100GHz bandwidth yet.

[rx8pilot]

What is the target audience or field for an instrument like this? What kind of advantage would it offer to justify the enormous effort/price. If someone had a 66Ghz scope and they stumble across this thing, how likely would they say - "I NEED that or a just cannot continue with this project"?

[vaualbus]

There are some other practical problems in terms of getting signals into the instrument as well. 1mm connectors are rated to 110GHz, above that Anritsu has proprietary 0.9 ~ 0.8mm connectors up to 140GHz. After that, you are no longer in coax, you are in waveguide which of course is banded...

Regardless, electro-optics don't have 100GHz bandwidth yet.

I have recently read a document from aritsu I think about connector and the feature.
http://downloadfile.anritsu.com/RefFiles/ja-JP/About-Anritsu/R_D/Technical/89/89_07.pdf
So they're developing a 0.8 connector able to reach 140Ghz. It is a interest reading by the way for someone that really haven't work and studied this type of rf stuff (rf? microwave would be a better term). 

[Terabyte2007]

What is the target audience or field for an instrument like this? What kind of advantage would it offer to justify the enormous effort/price. If someone had a 66Ghz scope and they stumble across this thing, how likely would they say - "I NEED that or a just cannot continue with this project"?

I would have to agree with you. The first thing that came to mind was the niche market for a scope like this. Although the video was very cool and informative the practicality of a scope of this magnitude would be limited to very few corporations. I wonder what the calibration cycle is and how much they charge? 

BTW, does anyone know what they are selling this beast for? I probably don't want to know.

[Hugoneus]

What is the target audience or field for an instrument like this? What kind of advantage would it offer to justify the enormous effort/price. If someone had a 66Ghz scope and they stumble across this thing, how likely would they say - "I NEED that or a just cannot continue with this project"?

I would have to agree with you. The first thing that came to mind was the niche market for a scope like this. Although the video was very cool and informative the practicality of a scope of this magnitude would be limited to very few corporations. I wonder what the calibration cycle is and how much they charge? 
BTW, does anyone know what they are selling this beast for? I probably don't want to know.

It is $1 million dollars.

[Terabyte2007]

What is the target audience or field for an instrument like this? What kind of advantage would it offer to justify the enormous effort/price. If someone had a 66Ghz scope and they stumble across this thing, how likely would they say - "I NEED that or a just cannot continue with this project"?

I would have to agree with you. The first thing that came to mind was the niche market for a scope like this. Although the video was very cool and informative the practicality of a scope of this magnitude would be limited to very few corporations. I wonder what the calibration cycle is and how much they charge? 
BTW, does anyone know what they are selling this beast for? I probably don't want to know.

It is $1 million dollars.

Doh! 

[IanB]

It is $1 million dollars.

Which is not, relatively, a huge amount of money when considering the operating budget of a medium to large corporation.

[rx8pilot]

If that is the instrument that allows you to get more data over existing trans-ocean fiber or something similar - $1mil is chump change compared to laying a new pipe. Just better make sure the guy requesting the PO knows what to do with it. My first task would be making a post in the "Show Your Squarewave" thread. Probably not worth the money for that task.

[Hugoneus]

Hack a Day has posted this article as well:

http://hackaday.com/2015/02/10/the-one-million-dollar-scope-teardown/

[andrija]

If that is the instrument that allows you to get more data over existing trans-ocean fiber or something similar - $1mil is chump change compared to laying a new pipe. Just better make sure the guy requesting the PO knows what to do with it. My first task would be making a post in the "Show Your Squarewave" thread. Probably not worth the money for that task.

I believe that is exactly what you have at the end of the video. It is showing a femtosecond pulse generator output. Although I have no idea if the pulse itself if square, of course.

[coppice]

They make a 100GHz oscilloscope because that's what the optical people (who are the main market) want. If the optical people say they need 200GHz or 300GHz and have the budget, LeCroy should have no problems extending the current design to those bandwidths. Beyond 300GHz  or so life starts to get more interesting. :-)

100 GHz version is made because they can do it, they need to compete and innovate, it is needed for industry and research applications. I have no doubts that slightly higher BW version can be made with similar architecture, but it will be more and more difficult for them because of front end limitations.

Do you think they can make 200 GHz scope by using two 100 GHz scopes and using similar frequency splitting technique? I don't think it is possible now, more R&D is needed to boost front end BW.

Making these things is not an intellectual game. Its a business. You make what people want. If you can't make enough of them to cover costs you don't go ahead. Many research prototypes don't move on to full development because the market is too small. If enough people with enough money have a strong need you make them an instrument. If you can't make exactly what they want you get the result they need by a more circuitous route. Right now the market and the development cost of a 200GHz aren't matching up or LeCroy would have a 200GHz instrument. External connections are certainly going to be tough, and the approach they use now isn't rated for 200GHz , but they'd find something if the market were there. From work we did in the 80s, I suspect 300GHz is about where you'd start scratching your head.

[vaualbus]

They make a 100GHz oscilloscope because that's what the optical people (who are the main market) want. If the optical people say they need 200GHz or 300GHz and have the budget, LeCroy should have no problems extending the current design to those bandwidths. Beyond 300GHz  or so life starts to get more interesting. :-)

100 GHz version is made because they can do it, they need to compete and innovate, it is needed for industry and research applications. I have no doubts that slightly higher BW version can be made with similar architecture, but it will be more and more difficult for them because of front end limitations.

Do you think they can make 200 GHz scope by using two 100 GHz scopes and using similar frequency splitting technique? I don't think it is possible now, more R&D is needed to boost front end BW.

Making these things is not an intellectual game. Its a business. You make what people want. If you can't make enough of them to cover costs you don't go ahead. Many research prototypes don't move on to full development because the market is too small. If enough people with enough money have a strong need you make them an instrument. If you can't make exactly what they want you get the result they need by a more circuitous route. Right now the market and the development cost of a 200GHz aren't matching up or LeCroy would have a 200GHz instrument. External connections are certainly going to be tough, and the approach they use now isn't rated for 200GHz , but they'd find something if the market were there. From work we did in the 80s, I suspect 300GHz is about where you'd start scratching your head.

There is also physics problem. You can't build a such frequency scope becuase there are no connectors type for that frequency and also there no use for them. I think personally that the end for scope is near I think that a 200ghz will never released.

[Lukas]

I'm wondering when you really need 100GHz real time bandwidth. All in the experiments in the video could have been done using a sampling scope. Although not has convenient since you'd have to provide a trigger source.

[w2aew]

I'm wondering when you really need 100GHz real time bandwidth. All in the experiments in the video could have been done using a sampling scope. Although not has convenient since you'd have to provide a trigger source.

One key application would be coherent optical signal analysis, where the quadrature components of multiple optical polarizations need to be simultaneously captured and analyzed. Another potential application is vector signal analysis of Wideband RF signals in the 60/70/90Ghz bands.

[mikeselectricstuff]

i have a suggestion ... not sure if it will breach secrets of making PCB ... 

i saw youtube 4 layer PCB how they make it (eurocircuits) ...

any chance of a factory tour that takes us to see these 28 layer PCB fabs ? and some kind of similar narrative about how they do it?  ... maybe some PCB fab will offer to show on EEVblog ?

Just watch the 4 layer video 7 times