My father (a carpenter) always said, “A bad workman blames his tools.” That came to mind during a panel at DesignCon 2012 last week when a panel of experts I was moderating pointed out that the reason you may be having difficulty with 25Gbit/s signals on highly integrated, mixed-signal ICs and boards is that you do not fully understand what your scope can do.
“Say what!? How dare they!” I hear you exclaim. But hang on a second, they may have a point.
This year’s conference, while still focused on signal integrity in general, clearly emphasized crosstalk, which becomes increasingly problematic with 4 x 25Gbit/s SerDes and 28Gbit/s backplanes. Add in tighter chip or board floor plans, with exponentially increasing integration of wired and wireless communication with increasingly proximal power planes, and you have a recipe for cross-coupling cacophony.
The panelists, Greg Peters from Agilent, Kevin Ilcisin from Tektronix, David Graef of LeCroy, and Eric Starkloff of National Instruments, are four of the brightest minds in the industry, and when the question came to what they were doing about helping engineers keep their eye diagrams open, they professed to be doing lots. And its reflected in the equipment (scopes) they’re putting out there.
However, that equipment can do so much, and is so advanced, they agreed, that in many cases it’s a case of educating the users on the full scope of what they can do with the latest systems. The devices’ capabilities have outpaced your ability to keep up.
So, my friends, is this a case of us needing a new interface for scopes? Do we need the next Steve Jobs to stand forth for scopes?
Maybe, but, as one test engineer put it to me last week, we kind of like our scope interfaces. It’s like a car. You can go from one to the next and always know what knobs to press and turn to go where you want.
Do you know how to drive your scope on 21st century data highways? Do we need to rethink scope interfaces? Or do you need to update your license to drive?
You are correct, and I totally agree with you. I believe that in the future UI should be more intuitive and fancy. The calculation time should be reduced. Just like a car, although the inside mechanical and electrical system is complicated, the use of it is not. :)
Re: I will interview my intern based on driving scope
Absolutely: PLAY! :-) For something as fundamental, yet potentially complex, as a modern scope, play is the way to learn!
I don't think we can ask for too much simplification though. We're professionals, doing complex things. We need to know what we're doing! That said, if the UI gets in the way, instead of being transparent, I get upset.
I am expecting an intern for an interview next week. I will simply take her to the lab and ask her to drive the scope, the same way she has been taught in her class. Of course, you assume I know how to do it well myself. For the easy ones, YES. But for most complex ones, I need to play for about 5 minutes to figure it out.
It is a great question he posed and I hope the makers and vendors are reading. Scopes are complex and it is embarrasing that a graduate will be worried if she knows how to use it. We need to make them simplier.
The big question is this: can we ever have a scope that will be as simple as the smartphone where you press a button and you wait for data to appear. All the knowledge about attenuation, loading etc just make things very complicated. We need simplicity at the human interface.
I agree with you. Time has come for us to stop worrying if we know how to drive scopes. They just have to make them simple and intuitive. That is all we need. Nothing more.
You are absolutely right regarding the two classes of users. And it is a challenge to create a UI that satisfies both. For the occasional user, many of today's advanced scopes include the little-known capability of easily creating a simplified custom UI that includes just those features that the occasional user would need in their application. It allows one to customize the controls available to best fit the particular application.
As for the power user, I know some that would go so far as to call the Autoset button the Wimp button - if you don't know how to drive, get out of the seat! These users are the ones that like to have control over everything, or at least understand everything to scope is doing "behind the scenes".
Modern scope, especially performance scopes, do their best to satisfy both of these users (as well as everyone in between). Regardless of your level of expertise, spending a little time with your local FAE will often be very beneficial.
And finally - if there are specific changes or features that you would find useful or helpful in your scope's UI, pass this along to your FAE or account manager. User feedback is a very big part of what shapes future UI features and enhancements.
I guess one can broadly diviede the scope users into two types.
The first one just wants to debug a system, get a quick measurement done, and so on. This means they are using the scope only occasionally, certainly will not spend hours going through a thick manual, and expect things to "just work" out of the box. For them, the scope UI absolutely must be very intuitive, it helps if the scope has a good amount of "intelligence" - and this intelligence must work reliably. Nothing worse than an Autoset button that constantly fails to lock onto a signal... (or locks onto a aliased signal - happened often enough to me even on high end scopes). In other words, the UI should hide a lot of the complexity from such users.
On the other end of the scale are the "power users" for whom the scope is their daily bread and butter. They tend to understand the intricacies of the particular instrument they use (and talking to your local FAE can help a lot in this regard!). They want to have detailed, low-level access to their scope capabilities, to the point that they dislike if the scope is trying to be clever and does something "behind the scenes". (And they will NEVER EVER press the Autoset button :-)
The challenge I see is combining both worlds into a single UI - intuitive and easy to use on one hand, but allowing you to tweak and adjust anything should you need to.
Now doing measurements on 25 Gbps signals IMHO is a much broader topic - this eintails not only driving your scope but also knowing a lot about the hardware side of things - e.g. probing, signal integrity and so on. I guess that could be the topic of a separate thread.
I feel that now a day the modern scopes are coming with good interface and soft touch buttons, which is more users friendly. Normally now with a single scope we can do many tasks, when compare with the old scope with mechanical rotator knob. During my college days I had struggled a lot with such old scopes. I agree that more improvements can be incorporate in front panel for a better understanding and user comfortablity.
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