PC scope hits 3GHz and 10Gsample/s

Called PicoScope 6428E-D, it has four 50Ω input channels and four input ranges per channel (±50, ±100, ±200 and ±500mV). Maximum vertical resolution is 12bits.

“The new oscilloscope extends the capabilities of the existing PicoScope 6000E Series, making it an ideal tool for scientists and researchers working in high-energy physics, lidar, visar, spectroscopy, accelerators, and other high-speed applications.

In general, 6000E series scopes have one 8bit 1.25Gsample/s ADC per channel, with two or four combined by time-interleaving on fewer channels to increase sample rate, or two or four are operated in parallel on fewer channels to increase vertical resolution – which Pico calls ‘FlexRes’.

In the 6428E-D, eight of the ADCs are time-interleaved to achieve 10Gsample/s on one channel, or rearranged to get 5Gsample/s on two channels, or 2.5Gsample/s on four. These rates halve for 10bit resolution, and so on.

16 digital input channels can be operated alongside the analogue channels, and op to 4Gsample of capture memory is available.

Analogue input connectors are BNC, with an adapter (TA313) to make them SMA-compatible.

Connection to the host PC is via USB and, depending on the PC, up to 8-bit mode: up to 360Msample/s (8bit) or 180Msample/s (10/12bit) can be transferred if the PC has USB 3.0, or for USB 2.0: 40Msample/s (8bit) or 20Msample/s (10/12bit).

A streaming mode allows continuous data capture into the PC’s RAM or hard disk, with capture size limited only by available storage.

An internal arbitrary waveform generator works up to 200Msample/s at 14bits

See page 6 of this data sheet for a 6428E-D feature summary