Any plans to add segmented memory?

[Eddd]

Given the new Virtualbench models don't have any more memory than older models, are there any plans to release new firmware with a segmented memory feature like similarly priced scopes often have?  This would allow the limited memory of the Virtualbench to go much further when capturing long sequences containing a lot of dead time like serial communications or digital signalling in general.

[Brian__P]

Hi,

While that's a good question, NI's plans for future VirtualBench updates are unfortunately not public knowledge. We appreciate the feedback, though!

Regards,

B Poteet

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

[KeaneSenses]

Overall 1 Mpt should serve most debugging applications suited for VirtualBench; we can see similar tier products from Tektronix like the MSO 2000 Series or TDS 3000 Series that have good bandwidth and sample rate specs but not a very high memory depth. Sampling quite high on a signal with long dead time may be an example of a signal that doesn't work well with VirtualBench - the user would need to choose a smaller region.

As you've seen, the VirtualBench Windows software application will pick a sample rate based on the set time division, to sample high enough to display the zoomed waveform with enough quality, and provide an easier user experience. If a user needs a sample rate of 1 GHz, from a practical debugging standpoint they will be zoomed in quite far given this relationship and will likely not be looking at more than 1 ms of data on the screen. Note that the peak detect sampling mode can also be used to always sample at the maximum sample rate.