Acquisition brings serial test software onboard

Tektronix has acquired TDA Systems of Lake Oswego, Oregon, a provider of interconnect analysis software tools

TDA Systems, which has provided testing software to the electronics industry - including Tektronix - for high speed serial data, will be fully integrated with the company's sampling scope product line. 'TDA Systems has been a successful partner of Tektronix for many years', said John Taggart, General Manager, Electro Optical Product Line, Tektronix.
'Both companies have provided customers with complete solutions by integrating TDA's time domain analysis software tools with Tektronix' market leading time domain solutions to help customers push the performance limits of digital systems designs, shorten product time to market, and achieve design objectives more cost effectively and efficiently'.

'The acquisition of TDA will enable Tektronix to further leverage product and technology synergies to accelerate development and delivery of more complete solutions to our customers who are working in the emerging high-speed serial data application space'.

'We're very pleased to be joining Tektronix', said Dima Smolyansky, cofounder, TDA Systems.

'By integrating the technology and expertise of TDA's time domain analysis software tools with Tektronix' market-leading time domain solutions, we expect to gain a synergy that will accelerate delivery of leading edge solutions for the benefit of our mutual customers'.

The TDA software is already integrated with Tektronix' measurement instrumentation such as the TDS8200 sampling oscilloscope.
With full support of the TDR measurement system, the TDA software provides integrated simulate-and-compare links between Spice/Ibis simulators and measurements, and includes interfaces to electromagnetic field solvers and other analytical interconnect model generation tools.

The acquisition of TDA Systems will enable Tektronix to provide total solutions including signal acquisition and complex analysis for complex networks used to carry fast serial data.

Increasing serial data bit rates lead to shrinking design tolerances.

As a result, the characterisation of electrical signal paths and interconnects are becoming increasingly critical to ensure signal integrity.

Customers need to accurately and easily characterise design performance.

The combination of TDA analysis software with Tektronix TDS8200 sampling oscilloscopes provides customers with an excellent measurement package that speeds diagnosis and resolution of signal impairment problems.

IConnect and MeasureXtractor software tools developed by TDA extract gigabit interconnect models when used with Tektronix TDR/TDT (time-domain-reflectometry/time-domain-transmittance) TDS8200 oscilloscopes.

This technique is a proven alternative and more accessible methodology when compared with using a vector-network analyser (VNA) for obtaining S-parameter measurements to predict and display eye-diagram, jitter, losses, crosstalk, reflections and ringing in PCBs, flexboards, packages, sockets, connectors and cable assemblies.

By comparison, TDR/TDT measurements are much more straightforward to make.

TDR gives immediate feedback between the probe and the trace during reference and DUT (device under test) measurements, while with a VNA it is not transparent to the user.

Significantly, time domain waveforms are much more intuitive to understand, to determine the effects of different aspects of a particular DUT.