Performance Settings

M1™ now lets you change your M1 settings to get optimum performance from your system.

Performance Parameters Dialog You can set your maximum memory usage per channel, which affects both PC memory usage and responsiveness. You can also turn Hidden Anomaly Location™ (HAL) on or off; HAL can help locate problems you might have missed, but it does incur a bit of processing. You can also turn scope animation effects on or off, as well as whether you can "throw" a waveform in the ScopeView™ while exploring a waveform. The effects of all your settings are shown in two status bars, one for memory usage, and one for system responsiveness.

Scope Connection via LAN

One of the most important performance-related changes that has been made to M1 does not actually appear on this dialog: the ability to connect M1 installed on a separate PC to an oscilloscope via either an Ethernet crossover cable or over a company LAN. The performance improvements we've seen when using a crossover cable versus running M1 inside of the scope (not to mention other forms of external connection such as GPIB or across a company network) are impressive enough that ASA now considers the use of a crossover cable to be the recommended method of connecting M1 to your scope in order to maximize performance.

Scope Acquisition Memory

Not too many years ago, the deepest acquisition memory available in a real time scope was measured in a few mega-points. Today, it’s possible to get a scope with a staggering 1 GIGApts of acquisition memory. While determining the point where diminishing returns for any given problem can be complicated, ASA has been directly involved in finding very hard/rare problems for over two decades and we have factored that experience into the factory setting for Max Acquisition Memory in the Performance Preferences. ASA believes that 2Mpts is a solid starting point for the Max Acquisition Memory.

M1 Tools That Can Affect Performance

M1 has capabilities no other scope application can deliver. Consequently, there are some M1 tools that have the potential to require a significant amount of PC RAM and/or CPU cycles and therefore affect the performance and responsiveness of M1 as a whole. These tools can be turned on or off from the Performance Preferences dialog. Note that for Hidden Anomaly Location (HAL) and Scope Animation, the Performance Preferences dialog will allow you to modify the current state of both tools from a convenient, common location.

  • Hidden Anomaly Location (HAL) – While HAL is extremely useful and proficient at finding many different kinds of anomalous waveform behavior, it can also require large amounts of both RAM and CPU time to perform its analyses. Turning HAL off (the default) will increase the chances that a subtle waveform problem will go unnoticed, but it can also significantly improve both performance and responsiveness.
  • Scope Animation – Showing an animated scope trace in M1’s ScopeView can provide a sense of waveform dynamics you can't get from a still view. By default, it is turned off.
  • Waveform ‘Throwing’ – This is a fairly new M1 waveform exploration capability, and can be useful in quickly examining long sections of the data. It is turned off by default in Performance Preferences.

Scope CPU Usage

Most scope manufacturers set their scope application to run at a high priority. This is very useful in improving the acquisition rate of the scope, but can severely impact the responsiveness of any other applications running inside the scope (such as M1) because the scope application will be using the majority of CPU cycles. If you are running M1 inside of a Windows-based scope, it is recommended that you allow M1 to set the scope to Single acquisition mode, which is the default setting in Performance Preferences. If you are running M1 externally to the scope (whether connected by LAN, GPIB, or USB-TMC), you may turn this setting off if you prefer to see the waveform being updated on the scope screen while M1 is processing the previously acquired data.

Learn More

For an in-depth discussion of these issues, please see our white paper on Preserving Performance and Responsiveness in M1 Oscilloscope Tools™.

For details on how to set up an Ethernet connection between your scope and M1 running on an external PC, please see ASA Application Note 09-03, Connecting M1 OT™ to your Scope: You Have Choices