Real-Time Oscilloscopes Versus Sampling Expanded

I got such great feedback about the last post on the differences between real-time and sampling oscilloscopes that I thought I would expand those thoughts a bit for this post.

	Real Time Oscilloscope	Sampling Oscilloscope
Triggering	None Needed	Needs External Trigger
Trigger Types	PinPoint, Internal, External	External Edge or Clock Recovery
Sampling	Asynchronous	Synchronous
Max Sample Rate	100GS/s*	200kS/s
Single Shot?	Yes	No, Must Be Repetitive
Catch Glitches?	Yes	No
Record Length	Up to 500M points	16000 points
Minimum Time Resolution	10ps*	10fs
Timing Accuracy	Good	Excellent
Low Noise	Good	Excellent
Veritcal Resolution	8-bits	16-bits
Capability for TDR?	No	Yes
Optical Portfolio?	Limited	Extensive
Top Bandwidth?	33GHz	70+GHz
Price for a 20GHz solution	>$150k	<$50k

Tektronix MSO72004C and Tektronix DSA8300

* Real-Time Oscilloscope in Equivalent Time Mode (operating similar to a sampling oscilloscope) can reach 10TS/s or 200fs time resolution, but same limitations of sampling scope apply (signal must be repeated)