Waveform Acquisition, Memory, Display, and Files

This topic explains the relationship between sampled waveforms, their display, and exported waveform files. Within Infiniium 2026, waveforms are stored as either single-valued (SV) or multi-valued (MV) data, depending on mode and settings.

PAM4 Waveform	PAM4 Eye Diagram

SV waveforms are waveforms in which each data point's time position has one and only one amplitude value. SV waveforms are stored in consecutive memory known as a waveform record. Infiniium automatically determines the waveform record's length. If needed, you can manually set the length.

MV waveforms are waveforms in which each data point's time position in a symbol can have multiple amplitude values. Multiple SV waveform acquisitions are combined to produce a MV waveform. This is accomplished by transferring each acquisition's waveform record immediately to a color-grade or gray-scale (CGS) database. The CGS database is a 1279 by 1023 two-dimensional histogram where multiple "hits" on a single data point ("pixel") are counted to construct a histogram. Statistical-based measurements are performed on this histogram. Either of the two following methods is used to combine SV waveforms in the CGS database:

• Overlaid waveforms showing gray-scale or color-grade persistence.
• Overlaid (or "wrapped") UIs (Unit Intervals) aligned by recovered clock edges to produce a real-time eye diagram.