Author Topic: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?  (Read 10885 times)

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Offline MathWizardTopic starter

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Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« on: October 22, 2022, 08:18:08 pm »
Products like CPUs, GPUs, phones/ etc have made huge leaps since I've been using them over the decades.

I have a 1980's 200MHz DSO, and a +2015 200MHz DSO, with more options and a nicer screen and more memory, and it's lighter and more compact. That's a lower end Siglent sds1(2)04x-e. Even mid-range Siglent and Rigol scopes are into the $1000's of dollars still. I never even consider top brands, because I bet their new 50MHz scopes are still $1000.

Maybe in the last 20yrs the multi-GHz scopes, and 6-7-8d DMMs have been getting a lot better and faster. But they cost too much for most people, (not that I need a multi GHz scope).

So where do people expect us to be in another 10yrs ?
« Last Edit: October 22, 2022, 08:58:03 pm by MathWizard »
 
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Offline Martin72

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #1 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.....
 
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Offline Circlotron

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #2 on: October 22, 2022, 10:28:26 pm »
My Rigol scope I’ve had for nine years you can still buy brand new today. So in some respects I’d say nothing will be different.
 
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Offline Fungus

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #3 on: October 23, 2022, 03:24:29 am »
Products like CPUs, GPUs, phones/ etc have made huge leaps since I've been using them over the decades.

100% irrelevant.

So where do people expect us to be in another 10yrs ?

I think touch screens will be standard. Apart from that ... pretty much the same.

$400 DSOs already have all possible features (more or less) and the laws of physics aren't going to change to allow them to have 10Ghz bandwidth.
 
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Offline Bud

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #4 on: October 23, 2022, 04:10:07 am »
They will be paper thin, cloud connected and we will pay subscription fees to use selected features.
Facebook-free life and Rigol-free shack.
 
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Offline pcprogrammer

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #5 on: October 23, 2022, 05:55:40 am »
Products like CPUs, GPUs, phones/ etc have made huge leaps since I've been using them over the decades.

Based on physics I think we are near the end of the evolution of CPU's and GPU's in the sense of moore's law. So apart from 3D chips I don't expect much improvement there. But what can be seen is the rise in bit width on the ADC's. The 12, 14 and even 16 bit scopes will become cheaper. But high bandwidth, high sample rate devices (>GHz) will probably remain expensive.

But who knows. Quantum computers or optical computers might bring something completely new to the table.

And price wise it will either go up like everything else at the moment or remain at what is. Just look at computers over the last decade. Sure they got faster and have more memory but the price for a similar setup remained more or less the same.

Offline Fungus

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #6 on: October 23, 2022, 07:33:38 am »
Just look at computers over the last decade. Sure they got faster and have more memory

But the operating system and software have kept up with that curve.  :)

CPU clock speeds have stagnated. RAM size is stagnating. We all have SSDs now.

Graphics has a little way to go yet, but not much.
 

Offline pcprogrammer

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #7 on: October 23, 2022, 07:43:49 am »
But the operating system and software have kept up with that curve.  :)

Unfortunately  :palm:

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #8 on: October 23, 2022, 07:50:59 am »
Products like CPUs, GPUs, phones/ etc have made huge leaps since I've been using them over the decades.
Yep, mainly from integration but miniaturization/SMD also.

Quote
I have a 1980's 200MHz DSO, and a +2015 200MHz DSO, with more options and a nicer screen and more memory, and it's lighter and more compact. That's a lower end Siglent sds1(2)04x-e. Even mid-range Siglent and Rigol scopes are into the $1000's of dollars still. I never even consider top brands, because I bet their new 50MHz scopes are still $1000.
And we'd still be paying through the nose for gear without the competition from the Asian brands.
In my lifetime a good but nothing fancy scope cost the same as a house 50 years back whereas the SDS1204X-E DSO you have runs rings around anything of modest value from last century.

Quote
Maybe in the last 20yrs the multi-GHz scopes, and 6-7-8d DMMs have been getting a lot better and faster. But they cost too much for most people, (not that I need a multi GHz scope).
I don't believe you will see this sort of equipment change much as the market sector is small and development significant.
Quote
So where do people expect us to be in another 10yrs ?
Even more choice but some with fish hooks....look at some barrel bottom brands with their very limited sensitivity that excludes them from some tasks. Experienced users spot this stuff a mile off but novices get sucked in by the price.
As B brands learn their craft a steady push into higher levels of technical achievement and a continuation of class leading at their price points.
More innovation, that is adding new capability into product ranges and new specialist product lines, Siglents soon to be released SDS6000L headless DSO being a fine example.
My last 10 years has been a wild ride and we live in such interesting times.
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Offline luudee

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #9 on: October 23, 2022, 10:06:14 am »
I believe we will see more fragmentation in CPUs and GPUs.

Why do you think both Intel and AMD bought FPGA companies?

Look at the architecture of a Zynq FPGA for example. You have
a powerful CPU with an SoC, and a Programmable Logic area.

Now envision a x86 10 core Intel/AMD CPU with a large PL area.

You will be able to load custom accelerator blocks based on your
application. If you need a real time FFT, you will load a FFT
module in to PL, if you need high performance floating point,
you load a FPU block, etc ....

I think this and much lower power consumption is what we will
see in CPUs and GPUs.

I also believe that high end DSOs will become cheaper: Look at
ADC prices over the last 20 years. The prices have dropped,
while performance has increased. I think this trend will continue.

The same goes for front end analog sections. I think we will see
better components (lower noise, higher dynamic range) become
available at much lower cost than they are today ...


Cheers,
luudee

« Last Edit: October 23, 2022, 10:08:06 am by luudee »
 

Offline TheUnnamedNewbie

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #10 on: October 23, 2022, 10:50:06 am »
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).
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Offline Brumby

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #11 on: October 24, 2022, 05:07:33 am »
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.
 

Offline TMM

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #12 on: October 24, 2022, 06:33:01 am »
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 ?
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.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2022, 06:46:20 am by TMM »
 
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Offline TERRA Operative

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #13 on: October 24, 2022, 07:08:35 am »
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.....

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.

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. :)
Where does all this test equipment keep coming from?!?

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Online tautech

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #14 on: October 24, 2022, 07:20:17 am »
Now we've had the DS1054Z for 8 years, and nothing seems to be around the corner that will render it outdated.
Where have you been since 2017 ?  :-//
Avid Rabid Hobbyist.
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Offline Fungus

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #15 on: October 24, 2022, 09:47:30 am »
I predict that Fluke will be making the exact same 87V.

(...and that every Fluke meter below it in price will have something important missing so you won't buy them)
 

Offline balnazzar

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #16 on: October 24, 2022, 10:54:32 am »
I am very unhappy about cheap (say, <2000$) scopes market.
It's all flawed stuff, and what spites me is that it seems it's intentionally flawed.

What do we have? Let's make a recap starting from 500$ up to 2000.

- the 1104x-e.
Great in terms of price/performance but it's a vacuum cleaner. It can house a fan of just 60mm, so you can't really improve the acoustical performance by installing a better one. Plus, you need to shell out other money to get the bode plots.

- the MSO5k.
The noise will eat you alive.

- the Micsigs
No statistics. I'm not gonna do paper calculations for such trivial stuff after having spent 600$ for the damn scope.

- The SDS2x+
Acoustically noisy all the same, and it starts crossing that line of price which makes you ask yourself if you should buy a western scope. So let's talk about them.

- The RTB2K
You are not going to buy it (4chs) with 2K$ and it has a horrid reflective screen, and it feels plasticky. Difficult to install a matte screen film because the screen is recessed.

- The Picos
Bad price/features ratio and the 4chs will not be available for a while.

- The KS 1204G.
1400 bucks for a 7" scope with many features missing? And the fan is noisy almost as the 1104's. No way.

So you start to think that you will save and buy a Tek 2 series. 4chs, just 70 MHz for 3000 bucks. Ok, I can live with that, after all you get a vesa mount, a big, bright sceen, a lot of features and it has the damn brand name on it, so that you can brag about owning it.
Then you discover it just got 10M memory depth. I'm not gonna spend 3 grands for a 10M scope.

So, there is no viable scope for a student/hobbyst.

 
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Offline switchabl

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #17 on: October 24, 2022, 01:34:08 pm »
[...]

So, there is no viable scope for a student/hobbyst.

I am sorry, but this is getting comical. You do realize that not so long there might not have been a single "viable" scope on the market (silent, low noise FE, large screen, super deep memory, full set of analysis features and what not) at any price-point, right?

I realize you want something without a noisy fan and actually I sympathise. In a lab with a noisy aircon and other stuff running all the time, it might barely be noticable, but after-hours at home I agree that it can be quite annoying. But that is a niche requirement, so if you really cannot live with the fan at all, you'll probably just have to pay more and maybe give up statistics or make do with "only" 10M sample memory or learn to apply a screen protector or something.
 
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Offline pcprogrammer

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #18 on: October 24, 2022, 01:48:15 pm »
There is a bit of a point in the fan noise level being absurd. For just a little more money they could implement fan control and use fans that are less noisy.

It is being done in the computer industry. My PC's are not loud at all, because I invested in a quiet CPU cooler and fan less power supplies.

Offline Fungus

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #19 on: October 24, 2022, 01:57:37 pm »
- the Micsigs
No statistics. I'm not gonna do paper calculations for such trivial stuff after having spent 600$ for the damn scope.

Paper? You don't own a calculator?  :)

Do you know exactly how often you'll need those?
 

Offline balnazzar

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #20 on: October 24, 2022, 05:33:19 pm »
if you really cannot live with the fan at all, you'll probably just have to pay more and maybe give up statistics or make do with "only" 10M sample memory or learn to apply a screen protector or something.

That's my point. These are all little aspects that make using the oscilloscope enjoyable and the money worth spending. It seems you have to forcefully give up on something, while implementing such stuff would be quite easy for the manufacturers.
 

Offline balnazzar

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #21 on: October 24, 2022, 05:35:18 pm »
- the Micsigs
No statistics. I'm not gonna do paper calculations for such trivial stuff after having spent 600$ for the damn scope.

Paper? You don't own a calculator?  :)

Do you know exactly how often you'll need those?

By saying paper I mean paper and a calculator. I'm not gonna press pesky buttons on a calculator when almost any scope does those calcs automatically. And I need them quite often.
 

Offline balnazzar

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #22 on: October 24, 2022, 05:38:22 pm »
There is a bit of a point in the fan noise level being absurd. For just a little more money they could implement fan control and use fans that are less noisy.

It is being done in the computer industry. My PC's are not loud at all, because I invested in a quiet CPU cooler and fan less power supplies.

Exactly... They could make it silent at little or no cost at all.  |O

And, as I said elsewhere, the pc workstation I built is much more silent than a commercial A-brand workstation (that costs 2X at the very least) with the same specs. That's because I implemented good airflow, sensors, and bought quality fans.

BAd engineering should not pass for 'normal' or even 'a necessary evil'.
 
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Offline coppice

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #23 on: October 24, 2022, 05:38:57 pm »
Lots of things might happen to oscilloscopes in the next 10 years. However, nothing much has happened to DMMs in the last 30 years, except who makes the popular ones. Why would that change in the next 10 years?
 
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Offline balnazzar

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Re: Where will Oscilloscopes and DMM's be in 10yrs ?
« Reply #24 on: October 24, 2022, 05:41:18 pm »
The same stands for the VESA mount. How does it cost to drill four holes in the back and make it just a bit more sturdy? Nothing.

The scope wouldn't get in your way, and its use would be 10X more ergonomic.

But no. I'm asking too much.
 


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