A decimation system and decimation circuit for decimating waveform data on an oscilloscope. The decimation circuit is implemented using sixteen parallel 16-to-1 multiplexers connected in parallel to a data bus which selectively captures samples based on control signals generated by a sample counting circuit. Decimation factor and phase values can be input to program the amount of decimation performed by the circuit. The decimation system provides even more flexibility in controlling the decimation and is formed by combining several of the decimation circuits with corresponding analog-to-digital converters and memory segments.