Tektronix announces enhanced IBIS-AMI, S-parameters modeling support for oscilloscopes

USA: Tektronix Inc. has extended the capabilities of the analysis system on its MSO/DPO70000 Series of Digital and Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes to include modeling of on-chip silicon behavior using IBIS-AMI models and S-parameters.

This significantly improves correlation between measurement and simulation for faster, more accurate characterization of on-chip silicon behavior and performance for today's mobile, enterprise, and data communication standards.

As serial data rates increase, most next generation serial technologies require measurements at the far end where the eye is completely closed. Equalization must be done to open the eye before the measurements can be taken.

Until now, reference equalizers based on a mathematical model have been used for compliance testing, but these equalizers lack correlation with simulators and fail to represent complex real-world silicon behavior. In contrast, IBIS-AMI models are designed using the architecture of the actual receiver silicon.

Support for IBIS-AMI is included as part of the Serial Data Link Analysis Visualizer (SDLA Visualizer) package that provides a complete solution for de-embedding the effects of cables, fixtures and probes for silicon validation, system verification, backplane characterization, and embedded system performance.

SDLA Visualizer also supports "what-if" channel analysis through simulating transmitter equalization and S-parameter scaling, enabling designers to predict system performance without the need for a physical channel model.