The Same Problem, Two Instruments, One Answer
At PCIM Europe 2025 in Nuremberg, the Keysight booth was making a very specific argument to a very specific audience.
The red wall behind the demo said it in three bullet points:
Simplify Design Validation.
· Make high-side measurements
· Withstand high-voltages
· Eliminate common-mode effects
On the bench: two oscilloscopes from different tiers of the Keysight lineup — the InfiniiVision HD3064MSO and the Infinium MXR6088B — both connected to the same device under test: a Wolfspeed SiC half-bridge evaluation board running live under its protective acrylic enclosure, blue LED glow and all.
The audience at PCIM is power electronics engineers. They know exactly what "high-side measurement" and "common-mode effects" mean — and they know why those three bullet points represent a real engineering problem rather than marketing language. The demo on the bench was showing two instruments at different performance tiers solving that problem in the same setup simultaneously.
The Two Instruments: Different Tiers, Same Application
The two oscilloscopes visible at this demo represent two distinct points in Keysight's portfolio for power electronics measurement, both running from the same Wolfspeed DUT:
Keysight HD3064MSO — InfiniiVision HD-Series · 1 GHz · 14-bit
The HD-Series positions itself at the design engineer's bench: sufficient bandwidth for SiC and GaN gate signal characterization in the sub-GHz range, 14-bit resolution for resolving small-signal detail on high-voltage waveforms. The waveform on its screen during the demo showed a characteristic power electronics display — a yellow sinusoidal/ringing signal overlaid on a green density background, the kind of visualization that emerges from the persistence display capturing many switching cycles and highlighting the statistical distribution of the waveform's behavior. The ringing visible in the density display is the post-switching oscillation from parasitic inductance in the power loop — the same 914 pH bus inductance that the Cleverscope demo across the hall was also characterizing (Article 033).
Keysight MXR6088B — Infinium MXR-Series · 6 GHz · 16 GS/s · 16-bit
The MXR-Series is positioned at the higher end of the application range: 6 GHz bandwidth for characterizing the harmonic content of GaN switching transitions, 16-bit resolution for resolving sub-millivolt detail on kilovolt-range waveforms, and 16 GS/s sample rate for capturing sub-nanosecond rise times without aliasing. The waveform on the MXR screen was a single, clean switching transition — a rectangular pulse with clearly defined rising and falling edges — representing a zoomed single-capture view of one switching event rather than the persistence density display on the HD3064.
Running both instruments simultaneously from the same DUT is the demo's actual technical argument: different measurement questions require different instrument tiers, but the underlying problem — high-side measurement, common-mode rejection, high-voltage withstand — is identical at both performance levels.
The Wolfspeed Evaluation Board: Why This DUT Matters
The device under test — a Wolfspeed SiC half-bridge evaluation board in a transparent acrylic safety enclosure — is not a generic power electronics demo board. Wolfspeed (formerly Cree) is one of the primary SiC MOSFET manufacturers, and their evaluation platforms are widely used in the power electronics engineering community as reference hardware for device characterization and gate driver development.
The red hand warning label on the enclosure is not decorative. A half-bridge evaluation board running at realistic bus voltages (typically 400–800V for SiC validation) presents genuine high-voltage hazards. The transparent acrylic enclosure allows measurement probes to reach the test points through designated access points while preventing accidental contact with live conductors. The blue LED illumination is a visual indicator that the board is powered — a safety convention in lab environments where powered and unpowered hardware may be adjacent.
The multiple SMA connectors visible on the board's top surface are the measurement access points — standardized RF connectors that provide controlled impedance connections to the critical measurement nodes: gate voltages, switching node voltage, DC bus voltage, and current sense points. Using SMA connectors rather than arbitrary PCB pads ensures that probe connections introduce minimal additional inductance and present a consistent, reproducible interface to the measurement instruments.
The combination of Wolfspeed hardware and Keysight instruments is a deliberate co-positioning at PCIM. Both companies are targeting the same engineering decision-makers: power electronics developers evaluating SiC device platforms for automotive, industrial, and energy infrastructure applications. A demo that shows Keysight's measurement tools characterized against Wolfspeed's reference hardware gives engineers a directly relevant validation reference for their own development work.
The N7020A Power Rail Probes: The Detail in the Petri Dish
The small glass petri dish on the right side of the bench — containing several black probe tips — is worth a closer look. These are Keysight N7020A Power Rail Probes.
The N7020A is a probe type purpose-designed for one specific measurement: power supply rail voltage in high-speed digital systems. Its key characteristics are a very low input capacitance (below 1 pF), a very low noise floor (below 100 µV rms), and an attenuation ratio of 1:1 rather than the 10:1 of a standard passive probe. This combination allows it to resolve millivolt-level power supply ripple and noise on rails that are riding a DC offset of volts — without the 20 dB sensitivity penalty of a 10:1 probe.
In a SiC evaluation environment, the N7020A serves a specific diagnostic function: characterizing how the switching events of the power transistors couple into the gate drive power supply. Every time the high-side SiC MOSFET switches, the common-mode voltage transient on the bootstrap power supply feeding the high-side gate driver creates a perturbation on that supply rail. If that perturbation is large enough — or if it occurs at an inopportune moment in the gate signal timing — it can corrupt the gate drive voltage and cause a mis-switching event.
The N7020A, placed on the gate drive power supply rail, makes this perturbation visible at the millivolt level while the SiC device is switching at kilovolt dv/dt rates. This is possible because the probe's 1 pF input capacitance draws negligible current from the low-impedance power rail, and its 1:1 ratio preserves the full sensitivity of the oscilloscope's ADC for the small signal of interest.
"Boost Your Bandwidth": What the Screen Was Actually Saying
The large display above the demo bench — showing the promotional visual "Boost Your Bandwidth" with an image of a high-bandwidth oscilloscope — frames the demo's commercial context. At PCIM, Keysight is not competing on brand recognition in the way they might at a general electronics exhibition. The audience already knows who Keysight is. The competition is on specific capability claims: which instrument can validly characterize a 6 GHz GaN switching transition, and which cannot.
"Boost Your Bandwidth" targeted at this audience means something specific: if you are using a 1 GHz scope for GaN characterization, you may be underreporting switching losses because the bandwidth limit rounds the edges of the Vds transition. The true dv/dt of a GaN device switching at 1 ns rise time requires at least 350 MHz bandwidth to capture with reasonable accuracy (based on the 0.35/rise time rule), and 1–2 GHz to capture with high fidelity. At 6 GHz, the MXR6088B is capturing the full frequency content of the switching transient without any bandwidth-induced rounding.
The parallel display of the HD3064MSO and MXR6088B on the same DUT — one showing the statistical density of many switching events, one showing the high-fidelity single capture — is a visual argument for when you need each tier. The HD-Series for development debugging where statistical behavior matters. The MXR-Series for characterization and validation where individual switching event fidelity determines the accuracy of efficiency calculations and switching loss models.
The Coherence of the PCIM Keysight Message
Taken with the Keysight demo from the Cologne EMC exhibition (Article 024, covering the synchronized multi-instrument EMC and wireless coexistence system), the PCIM appearance completes a picture of how Keysight is positioning its measurement portfolio across the two major application domains present at both exhibitions:
→ At Cologne (EMC/Wireless): synchronized multi-instrument systems for coexistence testing, where the measurement insight emerges from the combination of time-correlated data streams across multiple instruments
→ At PCIM (Power Electronics): high-resolution, high-bandwidth oscilloscopes for switching transient characterization, where the measurement insight comes from vertical and temporal resolution sufficient to capture the sub-nanosecond transitions that define GaN and SiC device performance
The common thread is the same design validation language visible on the red wall: high-side measurement capability, common-mode rejection, and the bandwidth to capture the signals that determine whether a power electronics design performs as modeled or as it actually behaves in hardware.
The Wolfspeed board in the acrylic enclosure was showing both oscilloscopes the same switching event. What each instrument made of that event — and what an engineer could conclude from each view — is the practical difference between the tiers. Both answers were visible on the bench simultaneously. The engineer standing in front of the demo could decide which answer their application required.
Instruments observed: Keysight HD3064MSO InfiniiVision HD-Series Mixed Signal Oscilloscope · 1 GHz · 14-bit · Keysight MXR6088B Infinium MXR-Series Mixed Signal Oscilloscope · 6 GHz · 16 GS/s · 16-bit · Keysight N7020A Power Rail Probes · Wolfspeed SiC half-bridge evaluation board as DUT · PCIM Europe , Nuremberg
All photos: Thomas · @SignalByThomas