The concept of high end varies depending on what you are talking about and who you talk too. In this Evaluation Engineering Evaluation Engineering article the author discusses high-end oscilloscopes. I am mentioned several times in this article as part of my day job at Rhode and Schwarz. There I am a product manager for oscilloscopes in North America. We have scopes that range from 50 MHz to 8 GHz.

For a little bit of context let me explain how this type of article works. The author, or editor, reaches out to some field experts. Each person is asked to fill out a written interview form. From there the author compiles the responses into a story like this one. This process is always nerve racking to me. I always worry I’ll misquote a specification or make a major typo. I don’t get see the article until it is published.

If you aren’t familiar with high bandwidth oscilloscopes, I think you will still find some value in reading about my favorite test tools.

If I were a professional actor, I would feel typecast at this point in my career. Whenever someone wants to talk about Arduino, Oscilloscopes or Capacitors, they call me! In this case, element14 asked me to do two videos on how to replace multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) with Polymers.

Polymers are an interesting capacitor type. What is usually called a “polymer” is better a called a “polymer electrolytic.” The reason for that detail is the word “polymer” describes the cathode layer and not the dielectric.

For more details, why not check out this episode of element14 Presents’ The Learning Circuit! If you have questions about these capacitors, head over to element14 and leave me a comment there.

e14’s TLC #40