We're happy to announce the release of an update for SP259 and SP259i Logic Analyzer firmware. This update can be applied to any existing device: you simply need to update ScanaStudio Software to its latest version. In this post, we'll dive into the specifics of that update and the challenges behind it.

Better trigger engine

It all started with a feedback from a user stating that he couldn't trigger on SPI transactions. After thorough testing on our end, we finally found a way to reproduce the problem on our end. Turns out the state-machine of the FlexiTrig engine (our trigger Engine that allows you to define various trigger sequence) was taking too much time. If you are familiar with FPGA and state-machines, you know that there are many ways to write a state-machine, and some clever approaches allows the same processing to be done in less steps, which in our cases, allows the trigger engine to operate at higher frequencies.

It was challenging, but we were able to reduce the minimal time between two transitions (detectable by the trigger engine) to less than 35ns!

This was updated in the datasheet.

Double the HyperRAM memory bandwidth

We also tackled another issue: HyperRAM memory bandwidth. The FPGA we're using do not have an integrated memory interface for HyperRAM devices, so the initial firmware release used discrete logic ports to implement the hyperBUS protocol. This was less than optimal, and limited the practical HyperRAM clock frequency to 65MHz (which was still good, since we're using DDR, Double Data Rate, where data is moved on falling and rising clock edges).

Early 2025, we redesigned the HyperRAM memory, and created a dedicated HyperBUS design using dedicated DDR I/O blocks from Lattice Semiconductor (our FPGA is a Lattice once), allowing us to achieve memory access times of 125MHz DDR, given our bus width of 32 bits, that 125232 = 8Gbps !

Given that the hyperRAM memory is used to buffer the captured signals before being transferred to the host computer, this update is critical for working on high frequency signals, as it will allow the SP259 Logic Analyzer to swiftly load and unload the memory and prevent any data congestion to happen.

Conclusion

The new SP259 / SP259i firmware update allows you to get more out of your Logic Analyzer device. The enhanced trigger engine lets you define more complex and more precise trigger conditions (like trigger on a specific SPI byte), and the doubled internal memory bandwidth lets you capture high speed signals on all channels for a longer period of time.