The HP 8131A delivers excellent performance to help you solve high-speed measurement problems. Transition times of less than 200 ps from the 10% to 90% amplitude (20% to 80% of amplitude: typical 150 ps) enable repeatable and reliable timing measurements on high-speed digital circuits. Since compromises in edge speed directly affect your measurement accuracy, the clean and sharp edges offered by the HP 8131A minimize errors due to threshold uncertainties. Matching the requirements of the most advanced ECL and GaAs devices, you now can characterize components and circuits with repetition rates up to 500 MHz (in Transducer Mode up to 1 GHz). The HP 8131A is the first product that offers 200 ps edge speed in a fully programmable product, which makes it extremely useful not only in research and development environments but also in high-speed production test applications.

The high timing resolution allows precise measurement of timing parameters, such as setup and hold times. Especially in the two-channel version, the ability to exactly position sharp pulses through independent delay and width makes the HP 8131A a very useful tool in evaluating fast digital circuits. With a timing resolution that is about one order of magnitude higher than the typical gate delay of ECL devices, it is easy to detect trends when varying a critical pulse parameter without losing a required timing relation. Spikes can be simulated with 500 ps small pulses, and, in combination with the 10 ps width resolution, timing and energy-related failures can be examined.

The 5 V amplitude makes it possible to stimulate high-speed circuits such as ECL, GaAs, or BICMOS devices. In addition, you can now test the excess-voltage immunity of your high-speed components and evaluate crosstalk caused by 5 V, 200 ps transitions. The 10 mV resolution helps to slowly approach the threshold levels of digital circuits. The minimum amplitude of 100 mV is enough to check for minimum signal swing up to a 500 MHz (1 GHz in Transducer Mode) repetition rate. In combination with the full programmability, you can now do entailed analysis of critical level conditions in an automated test routine.

The 500 MHz repetition rate of the HP 8131A establishes a new class of high-speed programmable pulse generator, which allows testing at the maximum toggle rate of your ECL, CMOS, and complex GaAs devices. Now it is possible to perform functional and parameteric tests of fast digital circuits under program control. In research and development, this means more reliable tests under repeatable conditions and easy documentation of test results. In production, the programmability opens new possibilities to functionally test high-speed digital components with significantly higher throughput under well-defined conditions.

If you need to functionally test your component at frequencies beyond 500 MHz, the 1 GHz transducer mode allows for shaping an externally provided sinewave into a squarewave with transition times of 200 ps. Especially if you need a very fast, programmable clock source, the combination of the HP 8131A and a microwave signal generator is ideal. This way, you can test maximum toggle frequency with a true digital 1 GHz signal.