Siglent SDS6000A DSO's 500MHz-2GHz

[nctnico]

Yep. The best way to avoid failure is not to try. 

[2N3055]

I think if users would have read my comment carefully, they would have understood: I do mostly measurements in sequence mode until memory is full. Then I go and fetch the whole content of the memory. And yes, then the difference is quite significant between Fast Ethernet and Gbit Ethernet or USB2 vs. USB3. The problem is: most people do not notice this difference because they do single-shot acquisitions, and then the overhead is quite high of "payload data" vs. "initiating transaction and protocol overhead to transfer this data to PC". Clearly, then you are not using your scope the right way for this purpose. On the SDS5000X this was not implemented properly: I could record in sequence mode but there was no command to fetch the whole memory as one chunk. I had to scroll through history (one command) and fetch trace by trace (another command), which was in my case even slower then repeated single-shot acquisitions. I notified Siglent about this issue and they fixed this within the limits of the architecture given by the SDS5000X.

Considering that they offer USB3 on the SDS6000A for a mouse/flashdrive etc. especially ridicules the fact that they do not offer USB3 for that interface where it would have mattered: scope to PC, where they only offer USB2.

Same for 10 MHz ref in/out: if you do not use and and do not know how to use it, then indeed you do not need it. It makes a huge difference in my long-running measurements. Besides, there is no OCXO in the scope. So whatever awesome timebase they put in there, it will suffer big time over temperature changes (e.g., day-night shifts if not in AC controlled room). Just because this is not important to you, it does not imply it could not be important to others. I'm still of the opinion that this would have been a nice feature.

These two are simply features found on "higher-spec'ed" scope and that would have been little effort to implement. It is not like I'm asking for twice the analog bandwidth.
Seems like people got offended by the term "professional". This may have been exaggerated, but just look at all scopes <$5k and then all scopes >$5k and you will notice that below that threshold, most scopes do not have the 10 MHz ref in/out ... and most hobbyists would not buy a scope >$5k; but the likelihood for a scope to have this is much higher if it costs more than $5k or $10k

I did ask you what are you doing... you might be an Oracle, we are not. I did ask what was important to you.
I also did ask you, did you do exactly this thing. And said that in this case your statement, from options mentioned Picoscope 6000E would be better for you.
All your statements how 25000 USD LeCroy "implements properly" something is a moot point (as I said) because it has different architecture, very powerful PC motherboard inside etc.

You didn't read that bottleneck in standard desktop scopes is not the interface itself but system throughput.
Not the raw interface speeds. Which obviously are faster if they are faster. Putting a 10 GBit Ethernet in a platform that can sustain 20 MB/s would be expensive marketing, nothing more.

You didn't read that Siglent has scope platform (in China only at this moment) that is rack mount, up to 512 channels combined system to achieve exactly this type of application you're doing. And other manufacturers too. There are also dedicated acquisition cards etc etc...

You are doing something that is NOT mainstream use of a embedded desktop scope and scopes of this type (not price class, but use type) are simply not optimised for this type of use.
The article you linked to calls for a specific synchronous sampling technique, and is calling specifically for special digitizer hardware that is not a general purpose scope. Like I said.

Most of the users here don't even like LeCroy scopes, because they are "not real scopes" to them. They feel like that for Picoscopes too.
Most people never downloaded a speck of data from scope to PC for analysis.
Most of them will save a screenshot from web server or to USB drive, or maybe data but to USB drive (fast USB for that is available). Many never connected scope to network at all, and some are not allowed to do so in their workplace. That is the market for this type of scope.

To you it all seems easy but it is not. Products are made on basis of platforms. You cannot make some Frankenstein contraption of random set of parts that are not working well together. You start with some reference design for basic computing platform that can be tailored for super fast internal data transfer and temporal synchronization between acquisition/trigger/primary data processing block and general computing/UI block. You do it on something you can have common codebase for. You also don't want to invent everything from the scratch (like OS) because it may give no gains but is expensive to make and maintain long term.

Also, this scope was collaboration with LeCroy. There is very "similar" scope from LeCroy, and it also has same specification in regards of all the things you mentioned.

It all started with your bit of rant about how it is makes an "unprofessional" equipment if a scope doesn't have specific features you need for your purpose.
Then I started to try to explain to you that is not an merit for calling something professional or not. It is a mere feature set and target market position (who do you sell to and for what kind of use). There are many minor subgroups between scopes (of same price range) targeted for different users. Long memory, high definition, many decoders and analysis packages, for digital, for power, automotive, for SI, etc etc.... There is also a scientific, nuclear, physics etc, and also automated testing applications.

By your logic, very expensive LabMaster 10 Zi-A is "not professional" because if used for power applications, it would perform badly for power converters measurements and you cannot use standard probing solutions... No, it would simply be wrong tool for the job.


That is all. No offense was meant.

Best,

[nctnico]

Yeah, that will teach randomOracle for sure... to stay away from this forum. 

[randomOracle]

You didn't read that bottleneck in standard desktop scopes is not the interface itself but system throughput.

let me explain:
- instead of heaving this loop(arming - trigger - fetch data)
you do this:
- arm - measure sequence - fetch sequence
so you save many-times over the "fetch data" command which is only issued once and then a big chunk of data is fetched that includes multiple measurements. this is independent of the scope bandwidth and already saves you a lot of communication which otherwise slows down the scope.

so you use a crappy scope and flood it with arm-trigger-fetch messages to fetch small chunks. no surprise that bandwidth goes down and I'm not arguing against that.
the better approach is to fetch large chunks of data as this increases the payload size relative to the protocol overhead (cf. link to LeCroy document). this improves system throughput a lot, even on crappy scopes because this type of load they can handle much better.

next thing: the SDS6000A _already has_ USB3 on the front for mouse/flash drive ... so clearly the system should be able to sustain USB3 speeds. so why not have USB3 to connect to the computer? your system bandwidth argument is illogical in the sense that for a scope that has USB3, it should be able to sustain the speed of it, too. If not, clearly, the designers made a mistake. Which is my whole point here: they simply "forgot" to include USB3 on the back and this is what I complain about here. You may disagree and that is totally fine since apparently it is not something you need. If others need that, you should be fair to accept that, too.

You didn't read that Siglent has scope platform (in China only at this moment) that is rack mount, up to 512 channels combined system to achieve exactly this type of application you're doing. And other manufacturers too. There are also dedicated acquisition cards etc etc...

Do I care about a device that is in China and cannot be bought by me? If this is internally based on the SDS6000A platform (which to a certain degree seems to be the case, based on the SDS6000L product number), then this further supports the fact that this is a pure marketing decision: they want to sell the SDS6000L with synchronization ... and not muddy the water by having the SDS6000A also offering this feature. I'm looking forward to tear-downs of both scopes and then we will know. Of course, this was their decision right from the start when they did the design. I'm fully aware how products like this are made and that this is a complex process. However, this is something they generally can do (SDS5000X, SDS6000L) and the extra dollars spent would not hurt much on a per unit basis (again: assuming they would have considered that in the design process).

Long story short: USB3 on the back and the synchronization was missed and/or a pure marketing decision. Not necessarily for technical reasons. This is truly sad. Siglent makes great hardware but with this one, they fell short of my expectations. But seems like people on this forum can't accept a good rant.

[...]

There was simply too much finger-pointing and bold font in the remainder of your post that I will ignore this part.

[2N3055]

You didn't read that bottleneck in standard desktop scopes is not the interface itself but system throughput.

let me explain:
- instead of heaving this loop(arming - trigger - fetch data)
you do this:
- arm - measure sequence - fetch sequence
so you save many-times over the "fetch data" command which is only issued once and then a big chunk of data is fetched that includes multiple measurements. this is independent of the scope bandwidth and already saves you a lot of communication which otherwise slows down the scope.

so you use a crappy scope and flood it with arm-trigger-fetch messages to fetch small chunks. no surprise that bandwidth goes down and I'm not arguing against that.
the better approach is to fetch large chunks of data as this increases the payload size relative to the protocol overhead (cf. link to LeCroy document). this improves system throughput a lot, even on crappy scopes because this type of load they can handle much better.

next thing: the SDS6000A _already has_ USB3 on the front for mouse/flash drive ... so clearly the system should be able to sustain USB3 speeds. so why not have USB3 to connect to the computer? your system bandwidth argument is illogical in the sense that for a scope that has USB3, it should be able to sustain the speed of it, too. If not, clearly, the designers made a mistake. Which is my whole point here: they simply "forgot" to include USB3 on the back and this is what I complain about here. You may disagree and that is totally fine since apparently it is not something you need. If others need that, you should be fair to accept that, too.

You didn't read that Siglent has scope platform (in China only at this moment) that is rack mount, up to 512 channels combined system to achieve exactly this type of application you're doing. And other manufacturers too. There are also dedicated acquisition cards etc etc...

Do I care about a device that is in China and cannot be bought by me? If this is internally based on the SDS6000A platform (which to a certain degree seems to be the case, based on the SDS6000L product number), then this further supports the fact that this is a pure marketing decision: they want to sell the SDS6000L with synchronization ... and not muddy the water by having the SDS6000A also offering this feature. I'm looking forward to tear-downs of both scopes and then we will know. Of course, this was their decision right from the start when they did the design. I'm fully aware how products like this are made and that this is a complex process. However, this is something they generally can do (SDS5000X, SDS6000L) and the extra dollars spent would not hurt much on a per unit basis (again: assuming they would have considered that in the design process).

Long story short: USB3 on the back and the synchronization was missed and/or a pure marketing decision. Not necessarily for technical reasons. This is truly sad. Siglent makes great hardware but with this one, they fell short of my expectations. But seems like people on this forum can't accept a good rant.

[...]

There was simply too much finger-pointing and bold font in the remainder of your post that I will ignore this part.

We seem to have problem in communication here.

You do grab sequence and then transfer data to PC. That is best way, I agree.
Data transfer to PC is not very fast on OS level (let's call it that). Because general purpose scopes are not servers and it is not optimized for that.

As for USB, there is some confusion about that.  Front USB ports and USB port in the back are not the same.  With USB an equipment can be either host or peripheral . Your PC is host device, USB stick is peripheral.  Scope connected to PC is a peripheral device, like USB stick.
Different direction than those ports in the front of scope where scope is a PC.

And while USB 3 and 4 are coming for free courtesy of CPU chipset on motherboard,  an additional special peripheral controller needs to be added to CPU bus to add USB peripheral direction. And these are not so mainstream as you think.  And way you connect it is not so easy or fast, because many embedded CPU platforms usually don't have super fast CPU busses exposed .

As a data point, Signal Hound BB60C USB3 spectrum analyzer uses Cypress (same as Picoscope 3000D series) USB3 chip and achieves max throughput of 160 MB/s. But that is because internal FPGA is wired directly to USB3 controller and is doing nothing except that, namely just trying to shovel data directly to PC. With same chip Picoscope 300D achieves fraction of that speed, because it has to do other stuff (BB60C does al data crunching on PC while Picoscope does bunch of data processing internally before). BB60C is quite a different architecture to a general purpose scope.

So adding a USB3 would have been done at additional cost of different computing platform, and additional computing resources just for USB3 peripheral part. That I tried to explain, most of the users don't use scope as you do. So scope platform would be much more expensive to 100% of users because of 1% of potential users... At one point you need to make a business (not marketing) decision. and that is all. One device cannot do all. Even without artificial market segmentation decisions.

It was not "removed on purpose because of marketing".   SDS6000A as a platform predates SDS6000L for maybe 2 years.  Rack mount data acquisition version was made later, to serve that market.   Your conclusion on this is simply wrong. I know it for a fact. As you said, some of us do have a bit "deeper" knowledge on this topic, not just speculations.

As a final note I was not "finger pointing". Quite the opposite, I wanted to make sure it is clear that I understand that you have specific need (that is not really mainstream use of scope in a big picture) and that I understand that, but that does not give you right to proclaim "professional or not" based on specific feature set features. There are many, very professional, scopes from many tier A manufacturers that also have low data throughput to PC and no REF IN and that does not make them unprofessional. Just not good for your use. Which is unfortunate but it is what it is.

I will reiterate: for your use a Picoscope 6000E series would be a better match. You would have better control of scope from your software, and throughput on these is quite respectable. They were made for this kind of application.

So I confirm your proposition that Picoscope 6000E would be better choice for you, based on your use case, I corrected some of your wrong facts, and explained why some of your statements are wrong, hoping there will be some learning experience to someone.
You basically got free scope application engineer consultation for free. Why am I suddenly a bad guy?

[luudee]

Hi Guys,


I have a liberated SDS5000X. Overall, I love the scope.

But there is one thing that really bothers me a lot, to a point
where I want to throw the scope in the bin:

The CPU is incredibly slow. Sometimes the UI freezes for a few
second. Often it fails to decode long streams of SPI data, etc.


So, my question is this: Does the SDS6000 have a faster CPU ?
More memory (for the CPU to work with) ?

Do you know what FPGA the SDS5000X uses vs the SDS6000 ?

And finally, can the SDS6000 liberated the same way as the
SDS5000X ?


Many thanks,
luudee

[tautech]

I have a liberated SDS5000X. Overall, I love the scope.

But there is one thing that really bothers me a lot, to a point
where I want to throw the scope in the bin:

The CPU is incredibly slow. Sometimes the UI freezes for a few
second. Often it fails to decode long streams of SPI data, etc.

Have you tried a factory Default to delete any previous hidden settings ?
New firmware coming soon that hopefully can address some issues.

So, my question is this: Does the SDS6000 have a faster CPU ?
More memory (for the CPU to work with) ?

Do you know what FPGA the SDS5000X uses vs the SDS6000 ?

I had both for a while and didn't notice any significant differences in operation/performance.
Are you on the latest V0.9.7R2 firmware ?

And finally, can the SDS6000 liberated

Yes

the same way as the SDS5000X ?

No.

[luudee]

...
I had both for a while and didn't notice any significant differences in operation/performance.
Are you on the latest V0.9.7R2 firmware ?

Hi Rob,


yeah I bet, but did you try to do real work, with a busy set up ? :-)

Try running all 4 analog channels,
two digital busses, one of the busses being decoded (SPI)
and also use the zoom mode ...

It will be slower than my grandmother trying to cross the street !


Yes, I do have the latest firmware, and did a factory reset as well ...


Cheers,
luudee

[JPortici]

yeah I bet, but did you try to do real work, with a busy set up ? :-)

I do
Yes, the ui gets slowed down, about as much as in any scope i've ever used (beside keysight for the obvious reasons, but i'll take everything more this scope has over ui speed when doing lots of stuff).
When i have busy setups i stop acquisition after i have acquired what i want to look at. Scope in stop mode is much more responsive for obvious reasons. Then there's the history mode to look back at previous acquisitions.
Or if things must run, once it's set up and i let it run it's as responsive as ever

[luudee]

I do
Yes, the ui gets slowed down, about as much as in any scope i've ever used (beside keysight for the obvious reasons, but i'll take everything more this scope has over ui speed when doing lots of stuff).
When i have busy setups i stop acquisition after i have acquired what i want to look at. Scope in stop mode is much more responsive for obvious reasons. Then there's the history mode to look back at previous acquisitions.
Or if things must run, once it's set up and i let it run it's as responsive as ever

I hear you !  :-)

Yeah, I also put it in Stop more after a capture ...


Anyway, I was hoping to hear from somebody who had a chance
to use both the SDS5000 and SDS6000.  I wonder if the 6000 is
faster or not ...

Cheers,
rudi

[Nicole01]

I would also be Interested in whether the SDS6000 is as much faster as the SDS5000 ?

It means that the SDS 6000 has a better CPU, but is it faster ?
If so, noticeably faster?

Thank You
Nicole

[tautech]

Welcome to the forum.

There might be some info on capabilities here:


Note, this video is 5 mths old so may not have the last released V1.4.3.3 firmware installed.

[tautech]

Posted in the SDS2000X HD thread and for completeness a size comparison of SDS6000A vs SDS2000X HD pic added here too. Random probes in use that were close to hand.

[tautech]

Defpom has nearly an hour long look at our SDS6204A.
Grab a seat and drink...... 

[Minki]

O seem can go to place order now......

[Martin72]

Defpom has nearly an hour long look at our SDS6204A

A teardown wasn´t possible I guess...
Would be interesting to see if there are indeed only 8 bit ADCs assembled.
Reading the datasheet I´ve stumbled over the ERES function - Up to +4bits are uncommon, usually you got 3 bits.

[tautech]

New firmware for SDS6000A models

Version V1.4.4.1
~130MB
https://int.siglent.com/upload_file/zip/firmware/Oscilloscope/SDS6000_V1.4.4.1_EN.zip

Release notes
1. Force trigger strategy changed (same as SDS2000X HD)
2. Save/Recall
   a) Supported to save all sequence segments
   b) Supported Auto Save
3. Fixed several bugs
   a) Cannot communicate with the SDG2000X and SDG7000A over USB in Bode Plot
   b) Random +/-200 ps skew between channels after power/reboot cycle
   c) [Power analysis] - Switching losses - Error in calculations
   d) FFT wrong vertical scale
   e) Memory channel trace always on top

[tautech]

New 2.1 GHz SSG3021X RF gen arrived today and to date we had not done a BW check on our SDS6204A ! 

1V checked at 100 MHz and 2.1 GHz.
700mm N-BNC Siglent N-BNC-2L cable used for tests.

[tautech]

New firmware for SDS6000A models.

Version： V1.4.5.2
132  MB
https://int.siglent.com/upload_file/zip/firmware/Oscilloscope/SDS6000_V1.4.5.2_EN.zip

Release notes
1.Eye Diagram: supported 100Base-T1 (PAM3)
2.SCPI: Supported Search
3.Supported USB-GPIB
4.Fixed several bugs
DY-WTFK-202203165613：Spectrum menu after installing
DY-WTFK-202209237014: Scope restarts acquisition after few seconds when stopped
DY-WTFK-202207076348: Filter settings way off in special acquisition modes
DY-WTFK-202209237015: Zone trigger doesn’t work at some input frequencies

[tv84]

DY-WTFK-202203165613：Spectrum menu after installing
DY-WTFK-202209237014: Scope restarts acquisition after few seconds when stopped
DY-WTFK-202207076348: Filter settings way off in special acquisition modes
DY-WTFK-202209237015: Zone trigger doesn’t work at some input frequencies

 

Bug IDs!!!!!!! Great progress. 

[Martin72]

And WTFK stands for WTF I guess..

[tautech]

DY-WTFK-202203165613：Spectrum menu after installing
DY-WTFK-202209237014: Scope restarts acquisition after few seconds when stopped
DY-WTFK-202207076348: Filter settings way off in special acquisition modes
DY-WTFK-202209237015: Zone trigger doesn’t work at some input frequencies

 

Bug IDs!!!!!!! Great progress. 

Yup and I own one of those. 
Once your reported bug has been confirmed it is given one if those ID's and on their private forum we can see the individual ID's in various threads.
Also first time I've seen them mentioned in a release however they have been using them for as long as I've been a member there.

And WTFK stands for WTF I guess..

Officially it stands for Dear Yoda WTF Ken ? 

[tautech]

Yup and I own one of those. 

Another suggestion from yours truly was to add some color to digital....this is coming.....soon....and hopefully to all models.

[tv84]

Anyone knows what is the new Siglent scope SDS6008Pro?

Which are its differences for the SDS6000Pro?

It's neither the 6000L nor the 7000A.

8 channels??

[Martin72]

Where did you find it ? Can´t find it on their chinese site..