Under Keysight banner, Agilent to continue innovating
Santa Clara, CA. Agilent Technologies—set to take on the moniker Keysight Technologies by yearend—will continue evolving electronic test-and-measurement solutions to meet the needs that market trends are driving, according to Siegfried Gross, vice president and general manager of Agilent's Electronic Test Division. Speaking at a press conference January 29 at DesignCon, Gross said a company cannot remain relevant if it doesn't keep innovating, adding that Agilent will not only innovate but offer the means for its customers to innovate. Citing Agilent's efforts to help customers continually improve their products, he said, “Things change when you measure them.”
Specific areas on which Agilent will focus include energy, including power generation, distribution, storage, consumption, and control. Energy presents global challenges that global society must solve, Gross said.
Areas more specific to DesignCon include mobile devices, cloud computing, and wireline communications. And even in these areas, energy concerns are relevant. Gross said that when he used to talk to computing customers, mastery of high-speed digital links was paramount. Now, he said, customers are concerned about making their server farms more efficient. Another area on which Agilent will focus, he said, is semiconductor technology rollover to smaller nodes, larger wafers, and new structures, largely in service to the aforementioned areas. He added that Agilent will be focusing on emerging markets including Thailand and Indonesia—with respect to both manufacturing and R&D.
Gross cited several specific technology impacts, including efforts to increase basic baud rates, efforts to achieve higher symbol rates for a given baud rate (using modulation schemes like PAM, for example), and enhancing link mechanisms by employing optical chip-to-chip links or using techniques like pre- and de-emphasis. In addition, he said, designing for low power is becoming a critical design criterion.
Gross presented a picture of the technology deployment ecosystem and said Agilent is able to test all the interfaces at the physical layer and the interfaces of many edge devices at the protocol layer. He said Agilent personnel actively participate in relevant standards bodies. Agilent solutions, he said, extend from design and simulation through analysis and debug and on to compliance test. New products on display at DesignCon include new Agilent EEsof EDA’s Controlled Impedance Line Designer, J-BERT M8020A, and the new N1055A 35/50-GHz time-domain reflectometry and transmission module for the Agilent 86100D DCA-X platform. Agilent also offers PCB test solutions, including the x1149 boundary-scan analyzer.
In conclusion, Gross said Agilent and subsequently Keysight will continue expanding application needs with innovative electronics test solutions.