What's the price of the chips in MSOX4154A ? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: MathWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2020, 11:12:00 am
content: Just looking at DMMs and I see the beautiful KEYSIGHT MSOX4154A, at over $20kUSD, and I'm just wondering what sort of prices per /chip on the more exocatic stuff ? I wonder how much of it is "off the shelf" chips, or very limited run fabs.Also, how powerful, of a scope, or DMM, could you make, if you had the front end of a good Scope or DMM, and then built the rest around a modern CPU or GPU, so like ryzen 3700, or i9-9900k, or RTX 2080.I don't mean it has to be on a computer motherboard or anything, I just mean if company X decides to use an out of the box i9-9900k, to make a good scope/DMM......how good or bad would that be ? What about GPU's (I know they are great at some stuff, but IDK the details)Never mind the cost either, I just mean, could you make a really good 1 or not.

author: jjoonathan
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2020, 12:32:52 pm
content: The "really good" scopes are all built this way (PCIe acquisition board, x86 CPU, windows GUI runs in an app). With Keysight, that means infiniium on up, while MSOX4000 and MSOX6000 are still embedded. I don't know where the threshold is for Tek but I do know the 6 series runs Windows. In R&S land, the RTE, RTO, and RTP run Windows. IIRC LeCroy is even keener on this strategy and everything above their rebadged TDS scopes runs Windows, but even if that's not the case their top scopes certainly do.

author: mawyatt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2020, 01:36:36 pm
content: Custom chip development is very expensive for SOTA devices. It's not uncommon for these to cost well over $10M US in development cost (we did a 2TOP communications processor that cost over $50M all toll). 10 years ago a mask set for a SOTA CMOS process cost over $4M, would not be surprised if this is over $10M today. These masks sets are so complicated, almost defying optical physics (well below diffraction limits), that IBM had a multistory building the size of a small warehouse housing nothing but supercomputers to calculate these mask sets patterns, it ran 24/7/365!I know Keysight and Tektronix develop custom ASICs for their advanced instruments. If you check the IEEE Solid State Journal in 2009~10 Keysight published about the SOTA AWG chip they developed in an advanced 180GHz Silicon Germanium BiCMOS process. This was a 12~14GSPS 14bit dual device with 90dB SFDR, and had phase noise of -168dBm/Hz at 1KHz offset!! They were also developing another chip that would operate at 20GSPS with over 100dB SFDR!! Keysight and Tektronix have also developed advanced ADCs for their leading instruments, well beyond the standard devices available from TI and AD, suspect R&S has also.The investment these leading instrument companies make in R&D is staggering, probably the highest percentage of sales of any companies. We all benefit from this a few years down the road when this technology becomes more mainstream and affordable by spinning off lower cost/performance chipsBest,

author: Jwalling
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 30, 2020, 03:02:21 pm
content: Quote from: mawyatt on July 30, 2020, 01:36:36 pmLecroy as well.

author: mawyatt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2020, 03:29:17 pm
content: Quote from: Jwalling on July 30, 2020, 03:02:21 pmYes, should have included them. They were using the 200GHz IBM Silicon Germanium 8HP BiCMOS process 10 years ago for their high end scopes, so certainly up at the leading edge with Tektronix and Keysight.Best,