Keysight's $1.3M scope - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: drvtech
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2019, 03:10:12 pm
content: How long before Keysight gives one of these to Dave for a teardown...? Fascinating video featuring the innards of a prototype of their 1.3GHz 256GSa/s scopehttps://youtu.be/DXYje2B04xEDrV

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2019, 03:24:38 pm
content: Quote from: drvtech on July 11, 2019, 03:10:12 pmThey won't as TSP already did that. There have been threads on this machine and about this specific video too. Quite a bit of interesting discussion.https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/keysight-announced-new-110-ghz-scopes/100/

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 11, 2019, 04:01:01 pm
content: Even Shariar didn't do a proper teardown as such - and he has Respect in this sort of territory. Keysight lent him the scope plus they supplied a couple of boards for him to look at more closely,withouthaving to pull a working million dollar plus scope apart.

author: OwO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2019, 05:00:55 pm
content: It might sell for $1M, but it likely doesn't cost anywhere near that much to manufacture. Most of it is R&D and other non-recurring costs, so it wouldn't cost much for them to give one to Shariar for a real teardown as long as it doesn't end up on the market.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2019, 05:16:41 pm
content: Quote from: OwO on July 11, 2019, 05:00:55 pmSure, yeah. In that respect, it's just like every single product you can buy. So no need to point out the obvious.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2019, 05:18:25 pm
content: Quote from: OwO on July 11, 2019, 05:00:55 pmI suspect this could still very well be a very expensive product to manufacture. There's a lot of custom and small scale stuff in there and that's just outright expensive to make even without taking NRE into account.

author: jjoonathan
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2019, 05:45:00 pm
content: Yeah, but at that price tag and quantity they're not going to treat it as disposable, so the risk is less than the mfg cost. In the parallel universe where they had Shahriar tear down the working unit but pooch snagged a cable and dropped a module off the table, Keysight still wouldn't shrug their shoulders and toss the whole thing into Dave's magic dumpster, they'd replace the module. It still wouldn't be cheap and I certainly wouldn't want to deal with the finger pointing, so sending pre-torn-down parts was a fair move by my reckoning.

author: JxR
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 12, 2019, 03:55:29 am
content: Shariar was a great choice for Keysight honestly. He has the background and experience to explain the technology involved. Additionally, his company Bell Labs would be likely candidate to purchase such a beast. I would also guess, that one of the department heads of the company may have some influence in what kind of equipment they requisition (if he felt such a scope would benefit their research).Dave on the other hand, while entertaining isn't going to buy one anytime soon, nor is most of his audience. I'm not saying that is their exact reasoning behind letting Shariar do the reveal, but it wouldn't surprise me if his company and location in it factored into their decision. Personally, I think they made the right choice, and I enjoy Shariar's content immensely.

author: 0culus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2019, 05:08:15 am
content: I wouldn't be surprised if something like this is indeed incredibly expensive to make, justifying the price. As other have alluded, there's lots of very custom stuff inside. Just fabbing that massively thick 30+ layer mainboard is probably exceptionally spendy on it's own. To say nothing of the engineering work to get a working product out the door. And given the purchase price, there are very few labs that are going to be buying one. Not a high volume product.

author: MadTux
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2019, 09:46:24 pm
content: All those ASICs on there likely cost a fortune by themselves, since its low production volume, analog and build from strange materials like GaAS/InP etc. Cost doesn't change much, if you buy a couple more.Assembly, testing, calibration probably isn't as easy and cheap as for a 100MHz Rigol. Also something that costs for every instrument.Actually, I would be rather scared to borrow one for testing/play with like Dave or Shahriar. A teardown with the obligation to return a working unit would be a nightmare to me. Far too easy to mess something up. And the humiliation/shit factor/wrath of lawyers from returning a messed up 1300k$ instrument is certainly not something I need.