What Is The Value OF The Modular Technology Released By Puyuan Precision For Electronic Measurement?

At the recent technology conference, Mr. Cheng Jianchuan, secretary of the Board of Directors and chief strategy officer of Puyuan Precision Electronics, said that the market space reached by Puyuan precision Electronics should be moved from the past 100 billion to one trillion. "This expansion is our strategic choice and layout." 10x SAM market expansion is not a small number for electronic measuring instrument companies.

However, at this technical conference, Puyuan Precision Electronics announced the "RIGOL modular technology", which in our view does make it possible to expand the scale of its market by 10 times. In the words of Puyuan's engineers, the technology opens up "limitless possibilities." At the same time, with the explanation of this technology by Puyuan Precision, we can also roughly see what step the development of electronic measuring instruments has come to.

What is the concept of modular technology...

"We often hear complaints from customers about why the instruments are so big and heavy; If there is a new demand, do you need to buy a new one and do you need to upgrade quickly?" "Our own internal colleagues have joked that our product launches and iterations are too slow," said the Puyuan Spermatron engineer.

"In the traditional development model"... "Different products, similar functions may need to be developed again. It even happens that a hole that was stepped on before will be stepped on again." This leads to high development and production costs.

Borrowing from Lego toys, "between each module, the concave and convex structure is clearly defined and there is a unified interface for easy disassembly." "At the same time, you will find that many of the modules inside different Lego sets are the same size, the same shape and reusable." "Do independent development only for the parts related to the features of a product." As a result, Lego can quickly iterate on products and provide a wealth of building options.

"Can our test and measurement instruments be implemented in a similar way?" This is actually the kernel of the RIGOL modular technology proposed by Puyuan Precision Electronics. To put it simply, it is to build software platform and hardware platform through a series of standard specifications and defined interfaces; Develop common basic software and hardware modules; Finally, different instruments can be combined and configured according to the needs. This reduces development and production costs and accelerates product iteration.

The RIGOL modular technology is characterized by flexible configuration, high integration, easy expansion, agile iteration, and customization.

Among them, the foundation of "flexible configuration" lies in software and hardware platform, software and hardware modularization. In terms of hardware platform, according to the market demand, the direction of the instrument for different purposes is planned; And based on market positioning, "planning portable, economic, mid-end, high-end positioning platform". Software platform, "there needs to be a basic software architecture to support the hardware platform", "at the same time, we will develop integrated test solutions and distributed control according to needs"; "For the same platform, interface UI, application software, etc., we can do standardization."

With the platform support and the decoupling of specifications, different projects "can be developed separately, but it is easy to integrate", and modularity "solves the reuse problem" to achieve the flexibility of project development. In this process, "through the hardware abstraction layer of software and the busization of hardware modules, the reuse of hardware modules and software modules between platforms is supported to achieve flexible configuration."

"High integration" is reflected in two dimensions: one is that "through the chipset technology, many complex functional circuits are integrated into the chip to improve the integration degree"; Secondly, at the module level, it "improves integration through advanced manufacturing processes and manufacturing capabilities." With a highly integrated module, it is possible to facilitate the realization of a highly integrated instrument. "Different product lines integrate the same modules and use the same technology to achieve high integration and compact volume within the product."

"Easy to expand" is not difficult to understand, because the modular technology is based on standard specifications and buses, to achieve decoupling between modules, "use the bus to expand, to achieve rich functions." "Based on the platform, we develop different modules, such as oscilloscope module, signal source module, logic analysis module, multimeter module, based on the same bus can be easily matched."

Puyuan Spermatron engineers said, "Users buy our chassis, which contains the functions they need; When there is a new demand, I just need to replenish the board." Even between different buses, there are "customized, formed bus conversion modules to facilitate switching platforms."

"Agile iteration" should mainly be talked about from the perspective of product development. "Modular technology supports two forms of agile iteration", one is that "an advanced function module" can be used in different product forms - reflecting the reuse of the same module between different products;

And, "For high-end products, we define an infrastructure that allows vertical iteration across the product line with a single breakthrough in a module." Taking the oscilloscope as an example, Puyuan precision engineers talked about "only updating the sampling module can improve the sampling rate bandwidth of the oscilloscope" and "realizing incremental development and iteration".

Finally, "customization" is that after having a rich "library", you can do combination and customization according to needs, "choose the right hardware platform, software platform, hardware module, software module"; At the same time, the module library is still in the process of continuous enrichment.

The technical support required for modularity...

To achieve the above-mentioned RIGOL modular technology, the construction of platforms and modules is not easy, which has some key technical points and underlying support, mainly including: advanced technology, specifications and standards, hardware platform, software platform and module technology.

"Advanced technology" should be the most critical part in our view, Puyuan precision electronics mainly talks about three aspects of advanced technology, respectively, micro assembly technology, thick film process, film process.

Among them, the micro-assembly process is related to circuit manufacturing, and through fine assembly, complex functions are achieved in a smaller size - which is also the inevitable move forward at different levels of the electronics industry. The engineer said that the micro-assembly process of Puyuan precision Electronics has now achieved a interconnection density of 50pin/cm on the PCB board; Reach frequencies above 67GHz; The "hybrid integration" of packaging processes including chip flip, lead bonding, surface mount, insert, etc. Finally, 40W/cm² of dissipated power can be achieved.

Thick film circuit technology here mainly refers to LTCC (low temperature co-fired ceramic) substrate, general source precision display with LTCC filter bank, to achieve out-of-band suppression >60dB - 2 times higher than the traditional solution, center frequency >20GHz, volume control at 20x20mm; The corresponding thin film circuit technology refers to L/S ≤ 5/5μm line width line distance accuracy, dielectric loss can be 0.0001, based on this to achieve 110GHz high frequency, in addition to passive integration of resistance, inductance, capacitor, further improve the integration.

And "standard specification" is the necessity of modular technology. In addition to external standards including IVI, VISA PXI, etc., there are also their own standards, such as RGIB (RIGOL General Internal Bus) general bus, which not only "realizes rich bus functions", achieves low latency and high bandwidth, but also "supports many special internal needs." Better performance." Modular software architecture based on these standards, decoupling between layers, and ensuring that software development follows a unified architecture.

"Hardware platform" is the basis for carrying hardware modules, such as the general platform listed at the conference site, you can insert 8 cards - you can choose 8 different functional modules to do integrated test solutions. In terms of product market positioning, "we have different directions for time domain, frequency domain and instrument, and each direction has different platforms for economy, portable, mid-end and high-end." The selection of different sampling cards for the oscilloscope platform on site is therefore very flexible.

The "Software platform" technology is shown in the figure above. In the system layer, the hardware decoupling is realized and the migration of different platforms is realized. The business module part is made into a standard call interface, and the "interface is consistent" of different products, which can realize the vertical upgrade of similar products, and support the shared module between platforms.

"Beyond the product, we needed RIGOL Tap, an automated test engine - the underlying engine for managing multiple instruments and supporting concurrency; Based on the RIGOL Tap engine, we developed Ultra Sigma - for multi-instrument management, which is essential for integrated test solutions." In addition, "To automate operations based on application scenarios and requirements, our solution is Ultra Sequence, which enables bootboot-based editing of commands, defined test sequences, and a feature-rich integrated test solution."

The engineer explained, "This is not enough, and after the two way to go, we based on the cluster Control software, RCD (RIGOL Control Dashboard) to achieve the control of large clusters." Overall, "from modules to products, from single instruments to multiple instruments to clusters, the platform software achieves full coverage." We can then focus more on enriching the module."

Finally, there is "common module technology". The module concept is broader, "logic, software, hardware, structure have different modules", "we define the shared IP, shared devices, shared components, shared modules, shared stand-alone, shared subsystems, shared systems, shared platform 8 levels." It is said that Puyuan precision current development projects will evaluate whether to use existing modules, clear development of new projects, according to the hierarchy definition to find its location, "for a development, cross-platform use."

Several application areas and case sharing

In order to demonstrate the power of modular technology, the engineers have made a few fairly high application fields of case sharing: remote sensing and communication, radio astronomy, quantum information, automated measurement. Limited by space, it is impossible to cover them all here. Here are a few examples that we think are representative.

First talk about the field of radio astronomy, the characteristics of the demand in the field of radio astronomy include the large scale and high complexity of the system, so the system is built in stages; Long life cycle requires upgradable maintenance; Scientific exploration puts forward flexible demand; But the implementation cycle is short - the time left for subsystem construction is very short.

"Over the years, we have designed modules that cover multiple functions such as playback, capture, synchronization, and processing." Module integration and rapid deployment can meet the needs. Previously, China Compound Eye, China Sky Eye and other projects, Puyuan precision Electronics have participated in the construction of analysis systems. One example is the High Frequency Radar Project, a global radar detection network for the detection of irregularities in the ionosphere at mid and high latitudes. The three radar stations in China include Hejing Station, Siziwang Banner Station and Longjing Station.

"As early as 2015, we participated in the development of Black Dragon Jia Musi high-frequency radar digital analysis system. At that time, there was no modular technology, and all the software systems had to be completely customized, resulting in the development of the analysis system took up to a year, and it was also poor upgradability and maintenance." This "Phase II project", based on modular technology, "completed the construction of the first set of digital prototypes in three months, and completed the customized functions proposed by customers in six months."

Another example is the circular array solar imaging radio telescope in Daocheng Yading, Sichuan Province. The tasks received by Puyuan Precision Electronics are also the development of digital analysis system of circular array: synchronous sampling and preprocessing of 626 receiving channels, data storage of 200,000 channels, system control, etc. Because this system is very large, the construction of three steps, has experienced different scale of system verification and construction work.

"When implementing the modular technology, including playback, sampling, processing, storage, etc., the equipment can be flexibly configured for different channel numbers to match the requirements of different construction stages, greatly reducing the workload caused by changes in the number of channels." This ring array system has been completed, it is said that the current Puyuan precision is cooperating with users to demonstrate the future upgrading direction of the system.

To upgrade the processing performance, it is necessary to increase the bandwidth of real-time data processing and improve the real-time imaging resolution. "Because the standard structure is used and the interface is very standardized, the processing performance can be upgraded only by adding processing modules in the future." On the other hand, the ring array will increase the transmitting module in the future, which is naturally easy for the modular system of universal source precision electricity.

Consider another example of a quantum measurement and control solution. The engineer of Puyuan precision Electronics said that with the development of quantum computing in the past few years, the requirements of quantum measurement and control equipment have also improved: including the characteristics of high system density requirements, more configuration functions, and faster deployment.

Based on the modular design, Puyuan refined Electronics has made "the world's leading integrated Quantum measurement and control equipment" Power Quantum, which is said to support 128 qubits (Qubit) in the 4U volume, and the integration is much higher than the competition. Building a 500-qubit measurement and control system does not require a few racks, or even an entire computer room, as existing solutions do.

Flexible configuration, reflected in the common qubit specifications and required channel number differences, Puyuan precision offers 5 standard card channel selection modules. In addition, the engineers also mentioned that Power Quantum no longer uses the traditional mixing measurement and control structure, but uses a fully digital quantum measurement and control structure, directly in the board to do frequency synthesis, providing a lower noise microwave control signal.

Finally, based on the above advantages, different scale test systems can be quickly built. For example, for university laboratories, the number of required channels is small, but the measurement and control function needs to be comprehensive, and a 20-bit measurement and control system including magnetic flux can be provided; For quantum computing cloud platform, relatively "no Z-axis measurement and control", it can provide 100 bit measurement and control system; For larger scale requirements, the Power Quantum is cascaded, "there is still good synchronization between channels," and can be paired with the DSG5208 Pump source.

Finally, an example of automated measurement. Puyuan Precision Electronics has always had a place in the field of industrial testing and measurement, and the solution after the combination of standard instruments can cover many applications. But as requirements become more complex and faster, the engineers say, "a modular approach is needed to lead industry in automated test measurement."

The engineers gave the example of a test bench for wideband RF transceiver components, which form the basis of an array radio electronics system. "This system basically uses RIGOL's standard instruments all over again." At the same time, "with the module, it is necessary to use multi-channel synchronization components and multi-channel acquisition components to put together the entire array." "Even when there are many points to be measured, we can still respond flexibly and build quickly."

This naturally also involves the software ability to support, that is, RIGOL Control Dashboard device cluster control software - in the application direction of the above-mentioned different fields, engineers have also mentioned this software, it is said that for differentiated needs, based on platforms and modules, can quickly build a system to meet user needs. The RCD software not only serves as a unified entry point, controlling each instrument, but also for data management, presentation, and analysis.

More cases will not be described in this article. In general, "when we fully embrace modular technology, what we can achieve is that the hardware is modular, the software is modular and agile, based on standard protocols, and the blessing of advanced processes." Add it all up, and the possibilities are endless."

Cheng Jianchuan concluded: "The RIGOL you see today is a demonstration of RIGOL's power savings over the past years, and only part of it is shown." The introduction of modular technology has convinced us of the feasibility of the 10x market size growth mentioned above. In 2019, the third generation of SLOGAN confirmed by Puyuan Jingda is "infinite possibilities", "The focus is that we should achieve scientific and technological exploration", "this' infinite possibilities' is the infinite possibilities for human society, the infinite possibilities of scientific and technological progress, and our infinite possibilities."