Products > Test Equipment
Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
TheUnnamedNewbie:
I doubt we will see bandwidth/$ drop a lot, but more processing might become a thing.
I'm mostly interested in the high-bandwidth end and am very curious when R&S will push beyond the 'low' speeds, and into the realm of the scopes used for SERDES and similar communication applications.
When it comes to that sector (high-speed communications) I imagine the lines between BERT and scope will blur further. You already see this with Keysight having BERT functionality in their high speed scopes when used in conjunction with an high-speed keysight AWG (provided you are happy with BER<10e-6, which is fine for a lot of applications now).
Brumby:
My observations are anecdotal at best, but it seems to me that the trend is likely to follow a similar path as has been seen in the past.
My expectations: You will continue to have similar pricing of equipment across markets - with performance and feature sets scaling appropriately. The point where we find "High End" gear just shifts up as technology allows. For example, scopes in the 50GHz category are going to be priced in a comparatively similar manner as 5GHz scopes have been in the past.
Certainly there will be watershed moments where new technologies make great leaps in capability - but the marketing crowd know how to price that. Inexpensive manufacturing does not mean low prices - well, not with "Brand name" products - but the cloners will have a ball.
Just my 2 cents.
TMM:
--- Quote from: MathWizard on October 22, 2022, 08:18:08 pm ---Products like CPUs [...] have made huge leaps since I've been using them over the decades.
[...]
So where do people expect us to be in another 10yrs ?
--- End quote ---
In the early 2000s, every couple of years you could buy a new desktop CPU that was twice as fast. In the last 10 years things have stagnated big time. Consider that a current flagship CPU is only about twice as fast for single threaded tasks compared to a flagship CPU from 10 years ago:
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-3770-vs-Intel-Core-i9-12900/1979vsm1668917
Sure you can get a CPU with twice as many cores compared to 10 years ago, but in day to day tasks typically no more than twice the performance is realized because client side software rarely takes advantage of more than a few cores, and clients rarely perform more than 1 task that demands 100% thread utilization.
Also seems that things like software demands have stagnated for the average user too. A PC from 15 years ago is quite sufficient to browse the internet and write word documents. Imagine trying to browse the internet and use the latest software in the year 2000 with a PC from 1985. Not even PC games and video are really driving the need for improved hardware anymore - e.g. for most applications the difference between 1080p and 4K video is imperceptible, let alone 8K video. Perhaps the only thing actually driving the need for faster hardware is developers getting lazier and making more inefficient code, and bloatware.
Any advances in entry level and mid range oscilloscopes will reflect what is available in terms of FPGA/SoC technology, something that again has been rather stagnant in recent times. Also as capabilities become in excess for what the average user needs, development cycles for new models become longer and longer. Consider the Rigol DS1052E was released in 2009 and was made almost entirely outdated and irrelevant by the DS1054Z only 5 years later. Now we've had the DS1054Z for 8 years, and nothing seems to be around the corner that will render it outdated.
TERRA Operative:
--- Quote from: joeqsmith on October 24, 2022, 04:40:28 am ---
--- Quote from: Martin72 on October 22, 2022, 08:41:46 pm ---Hi,
At work we got some very old lecroy DSOs from the early 90s.
With 50kpts memory and 100Msa/s max. ....
So I thought this was long time ago, today it should be better, more and cheaper.
Better and more is correct, but cheaper...
Even nowadays these old scopes got features you won´t find on the modern cheap and good scopes, you find them on the modern expensive scopes of today...
Many things are getting cheaper, thank god otherwise I hadn´t a DSO.
But it seems there´s an invisible red line you can´t go under what quality/features/specs in relationship with price concerns.
Today you can also spend more than 10000 bucks on scopes from rigol and siglent.....
--- End quote ---
I wanted to use my old LeCroy 7200 today. It let out a distinct smell as soon as it was powered up, then shut down. This thing is a relic. I bought it 22 years ago and it was old then. Indeed it has features you are not apt to see on modern low end scopes.
Pulling it apart, the lithium battery had split open and leaked onto the PCB. I don't use the scope very often and it had time to do it's thing. Eating away the solder mask and traces... I put new batteries in when I bought the scope and sadly, forgot all about them. Lucky it was basically the power supply area and nothing in the high speed sections. So in the sink it went.
--- End quote ---
I just made some replacement PCB's that convert these Renata 1000-7 backup batteries to CR2032 cells for my Tek AFG5101 func gen.
PM me if you want one of my spare PCB's for the cost of shipping. :)
tautech:
--- Quote from: TMM on October 24, 2022, 06:33:01 am ---Now we've had the DS1054Z for 8 years, and nothing seems to be around the corner that will render it outdated.
--- End quote ---
Where have you been since 2017 ? :-//
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