Customer Testimonial - Tektronix  

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"The Virtex FPGA provides field upgradeability of the code, which is critical in this fast moving, cutting-edge application, so an ASIC was not an option in this design,"Brainard Brauer, Tektronix Design Engineer.

Technology leader Tektronix, Inc. headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon, recently announced its new suite of test and measurement instruments designed for the most challenging leading-edge digital design applications. The integrated tool set is composed of new performance-leading instruments: the TLA 714/720 portable and benchtop logic analyzers, the TDS694C digital storage oscilloscope (DSO) and complementary connection devices. The instruments were designed to work together to provide specialized features and optimized performance. Tektronix chose the Xilinx Virtex XCV300 device specifically for its TLA 700 Rambus adapter, because of it's flexibility, and overall performance. 

"A digital design engineer operates in an environment of accelerating technological change under extreme time-to-market conditions," said Steve Jennings, director of marketing, Tektronix' Measurement Business Division. "This new integrated solution provides superior measurement and analysis capabilities for even the most challenging design areas like Rambus memory systems and next-generation microprocessors." 

"The Virtex FPGA provides field upgradeability of the code, which is critical in this fast moving, cutting-edge application, so an ASIC was not an option in this design," said Brauer. "High register count is a key to our bus decoding implementation, once deserialized into a wide, parallel pipe-line architecture. The Virtex device provided the lower power consumption we needed with higher useable register densities than previous devices and, at the same time, it provided the tight set up and hold specifications needed for this application across a wide temperature range." 

Brauer used the Xilinx Alliance Series software to design the TMS810 Rambus interface adapter, which provides the crucial front end interface between Rambus and the TLA700 logic analyzer. The Alliance Series is the industry's leading open systems software that provides the flexibility to select the best EDA design environment for a specific application. Combining the advanced implementation technology of Xilinx with the strengths of its partners provides a powerful overall design solution, the highest clock performance and the highest densities in the industry. 

"Virtex FPGAs have aided us in deserializing the Rambus control and data buses into a parallel format," said Brauer. Virtex devices accept Rambus data after presampling logic has converted the serial channel from 26 bits on both edges at 800/Mbit/sec to 56 single edge signals to 400Mbits/sec. "Tektronix has been successful at using the Virtex FPGA to accept this 400MBits/sec data directly into the Virtex device." This was achieved by providing multi-phase clocks to the device (four phases). Each clock was connected to a different global clock input, routed over its own internal global route with separate DLL's (digital delay lock loops). 

"The device achieves a setup/hold specification better than 1.2ns worst case across temperature and at any pin of the device," said Brauer. "It is critical to verify that the tools have routed each data input to an IOB (Input/Output Block). In the Tektronix implementation, four input pins were consumed for each data line. As a result, four IOBs were required (one for each clock phase). The package loading must be carefully understood and compensated for in order to avoid signal slew rate issues. 

The new TLA 700 features an easy-to-use Windows 98 user interface and a PC platform with expanded openness in response to customers' strong acceptance of the original TLA 700's open platform. Tektronix built in an industry-standard computer and operating system to provide the user with a familiar interface. Because it works just like any other PC-based software, the user can focus on the problem, rather than the tool. Tektronix has also created the Embedded Systems Tools Partners Program to deliver development and debug solutions for the TLA 700 Series. The solutions range from providing software, analysis tools and physical processor connections, to disassembly software that runs on the logic analyzer. 

The new family of logic analyzers, the TLA 714 and the TLA 720, is replacing the original TLA 704/711 Series. They offer an industry-leading combination of acquisition speed, channel width and memory depth, all of which are essential for supporting next-generation microprocessor designs. Now offering up to 16M, the TLA 714/720 have the deepest memory configuration in the industry plus an innovative hardware-assisted display system to simplify the management of such a large memory. 

At the heart of all of the TLA 700 Series logic analyzer modules is a breakthrough called MagniVuä acquisition technology. MagniVu acquisition technology is a super-high-speed sampling architecture that dramatically changes the way logic analyzers work and what functionality they offer. All incoming data is oversampled at a 2GHz rate, regardless of how the logic analyzer is being used. The oversampled data is then processed in real time to perform timing acquisition, state acquisition, and triggering without missing the slightest piece of crucial timing information on any channel. 

Today Tektronix, Inc. (NYSE:TEK) is comprised of measurement and color printing businesses. The company is headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon and has operations in 26 countries outside the United States. Founded in 1946, Tektronix had revenues of $1.9 billion in fiscal 1999. 

The company recently announced it has reached agreement to sell its color printing business to Xerox Corporation. After the transaction closes, Tektronix, Inc. will be a focused measurement company. For more information, visit the website at www.tek.com. 

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