MultiLane ML4039-BTP 100G BERT teardown, review, and experiments (plus introducing ngscopeclient)

In this video Andrew shows a board-level analysis and a block diagram discussion of the MultiLane ML4039-BTP 100G Bit Error Rate Tester (BERT), then performs several experiments to demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of the instrument. Several of the experiments are controlled with ngscopeclient, an open source tool for remote control, automation, and data analysis of complex electronic test and measurement setups.

ngscopeclient: https://github.com/glscopeclient/scop...

00:00 Introduction
00:33 Teardown
06:40 Block diagram analysis, theory of operation
12:34 Characterization of 300mm lossy FR4 channel at 10.3125 Gbps
16:15 Testing the same channel at 14 and 25 Gbps
19:20 Realtime oscilloscope measurement of TX waveform and output clock with ngscopeclient
24:05 Effect of TX FFE on output eye pattern
24:40 Applying external spread spectrum reference clock
27:20 Reference clock output, limitations of divided TX LO and user pattern generator
31:23 Using ngscopeclient to send arbitrary 16-bit patterns out the refclk port
32:46 Using ngscopeclient to take eye pattern and realtime BER measurements
35:25 Driving the BERT with an external source through 150mm lossy FR4 channel and optimizing DUT transmit emphasis
38:51 Concluding thoughts

I'm still figuring out audio so apologies for some of the sections that sound less good. I also realized very late in editing that I was using window rather than screen capture in OBS, so a few popup windows like file browsers didn't get captured.