Construction and commissioning of a technological prototype of a high-granularity semi-digital hadronic calorimeter

A large prototype of 1.3m3 was designed and built as a demonstrator of the semi-digital hadronic calorimeter (SDHCAL) concept proposed for the future ILC experiments. The prototype is a sampling hadronic calorimeter of 48 units. Each unit is built of an active layer made of 1m2 Glass Resistive Plate Chamber(GRPC) detector placed inside a cassette whose walls are made of stainless steel. The cassette contains also the electronics used to read out the GRPC detector. The lateral granularity of the active layer is provided by the electronics pick-up pads of 1cm2 each. The cassettes are inserted into a self-supporting mechanical structure built also of stainless steel plates which, with the cassettes walls, play the role of the absorber. The prototype was designed to be very compact and important efforts were made to minimize the number of services cables to optimize the efficiency of the Particle Flow Algorithm techniques to be used in the future ILC experiments. The different components of the SDHCAL prototype were studied individually and strict criteria were applied for the final selection of these components. Basic calibration procedures were performed after the prototype assembling. The prototype is the first of a series of new-generation detectors equipped with a power-pulsing mode intended to reduce the power consumption of this highly granular detector. A dedicated acquisition system was developed to deal with the output of more than 440000 electronics channels in both trigger and triggerless modes. After its completion in 2011, the prototype was commissioned using cosmic rays and particles beams at CERN.Comment: 49 pages, 41 figure

Printed circuit board power distribution network modeling, analysis and design, and, statistical crosstalk analysis for high speed digital links

High-speed digital systems are moving to higher data rates and smaller supply voltages as the scale of integration goes smaller. With the smaller bit periods and the smaller operating voltages, the tolerable timing and noise margins are reducing. There are many sources of disturbances contributing to the tolerance margins. These margins have to account for inter symbol interference (ISI), reflections, jitter, noise from power distribution networks (PDN) and crosstalk. An important task during the design phase of the system is to find and mitigate the noise from such sources. This thesis proposes modeling and analysis methodology to resolve some of the problems while proposing relevant design methodologies to reduce the system design cycles. PDN design forms a critical part of a high-speed digital design to provide a low-noise power supply to the integrated circuits (ICs) within some peak voltage ripple for normal functioning. Switching of transistors in the IC leads to a high-frequency current draw and generates the simultaneous switching noise (SSN), which propagates along the PDN from the chip to the PCB and causes several EMI and SI problems. A physics-based modeling approach for PCB PDN is proposed which is used for analysis and design guideline development. A design methodology is developed which guides the designer to make better design decisions, knowing the impact on PDN performance without the use of full-wave tools. Crosstalk forms a critical part of the budget, and if ignored, can lead to design failures. A statistical method to find the distribution of crosstalk at the victim using the single bit response principle is proposed. The methodology is extended to multiple-aggressor system, and, can be used to identify worst case crosstalk and find dominant crosstalk contributors in a system. --Abstract, page iii

Design and Characterization of a Standard Cell Library for the FREEPDK45 Process

The scope of this thesis can be summarized to two aspects. Firstly, to develop a design methodology to do layouts for a standard cell library to ensure no electrical and functional errors occur due to poor design of the cells when an IC is built out of them using CAD tools. The cell library has been built for the FREEPDK45 process following these rules and can be used for testing the emerging architectures in VLSI and research in academic institutions. Secondly, to establish procedures for characterizing a given cell library using Encounter library characterizer tool from Cadence in yielding correct results. The factors that determine the timing of the cells are studied and the setup to yield accurate results for the cell library developed has been presented. This library has been used in building a mixed signal integrated circuit, and the problems in completing the final physical verification (DRC and LVS) have been studied. The Cell library developed for the FREEPDK process has been characterized and abstracted. The library is tested for its structural correctness when input to CAD tools to construct an integrated circuit. The IC built has been verified to be DRC and LVS clean. The design rules established for building standard cell layouts can be used as a reference manual for designing any other library. The process of characterization is automated and made easy by the Encounter library characterizer tool. However, correctly setting up the tool is very important to yield correct results. The factors that determine this setup have been explored and documented which can also be used as a reference for characterizing any given cell library. The problems while doing LVS for an IC with multiple power domains using Calibre tool and the solution to eliminate them have been documented as well.School of Electrical & Computer Engineerin

Programmable active memories in real-time tasks: implementing data-driven triggers for LHC experiments

The future Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to be built at CERN, presents among other technological challenges a formidable problem of real-time data analysis. At a primary event rate of 40 MHz, a multi-stage trigger system has to analyze data to decide which is the fraction of events that should be preserved on permanent storage for further analysis. We report on implementations of local algorithms for feature extraction as part of triggering, using the detectors of the proposed ATLAS experiment as a model. The algorithms were implemented for a decision frequency of 100 kHz, on different data-driven programmable devices based on structures of field- programmable gate arrays and memories. The implementations were demonstrated at full speed with emulated input, and were also integrated into a prototype detector running in a test beam at CERN, in June 1994

Scalable Analysis, Verification and Design of IC Power Delivery

Due to recent aggressive process scaling into the nanometer regime, power delivery network design faces many challenges that set more stringent and specific requirements to the EDA tools. For example, from the perspective of analysis, simulation efficiency for large grids must be improved and the entire network with off-chip models and nonlinear devices should be able to be analyzed. Gated power delivery networks have multiple on/off operating conditions that need to be fully verified against the design requirements. Good power delivery network designs not only have to save the wiring resources for signal routing, but also need to have the optimal parameters assigned to various system components such as decaps, voltage regulators and converters. This dissertation presents new methodologies to address these challenging problems. At first, a novel parallel partitioning-based approach which provides a flexible network partitioning scheme using locality is proposed for power grid static analysis. In addition, a fast CPU-GPU combined analysis engine that adopts a boundary-relaxation method to encompass several simulation strategies is developed to simulate power delivery networks with off-chip models and active circuits. These two proposed analysis approaches can achieve scalable simulation runtime. Then, for gated power delivery networks, the challenge brought by the large verification space is addressed by developing a strategy that efficiently identifies a number of candidates for the worst-case operating condition. The computation complexity is reduced from O(2^N) to O(N). At last, motivated by a proposed two-level hierarchical optimization, this dissertation presents a novel locality-driven partitioning scheme to facilitate divide-and-conquer-based scalable wire sizing for large power delivery networks. Simultaneous sizing of multiple partitions is allowed which leads to substantial runtime improvement. Moreover, the electric interactions between active regulators/converters and passive networks and their influences on key system design specifications are analyzed comprehensively. With the derived design insights, the system-level co-design of a complete power delivery network is facilitated by an automatic optimization flow. Results show significant performance enhancement brought by the co-design

MOS CURRENT MODE LOGIC (MCML) ANALYSIS FOR QUIET DIGITAL CIRCUITRY AND CREATION OF A STANDARD CELL LIBRARY FOR REDUCING THE DEVELOPMENT TIME OF MIXED-SIGNAL CHIPS

Many modern digital systems use forms of CMOS logical implementation due to the straight forward design nature of CMOS logic and minimal device area since CMOS uses fewer transistors than other logic families. To achieve high-performance requirements in mixed-signal chip development and quiet, noiseless circuitry, this thesis provides an alternative toCMOSin the form of MOS Current Mode Logic (MCML). MCML dissipates constant current and does not produce noise during value changing in a circuit CMOS circuits do. CMOS logical networks switch during clock ticks and with every device switching, noise is created on the supply and ground to deal with the transitions. Creating a noiseless standard cell library with MCML allows use of circuitry that uses low voltage switching with 1.5V between logic levels in a quiet or mixed-signal environment as opposed to the full rail to rail swinging of CMOS logic. This allows cohesive implementation with analog circuitry on the same chip due to constant current and lower switching ranges not creating rail noise during digital switching. Standard cells allow for the Cadence tools to automatically generate circuits and Cadence serves as the development platform for the MCML standard cells. The theory surrounding MCML is examined along with current and future applications well-suited for MCML are researched and explored with the goal of highlighting valid candidate circuits for MCML. Inverters and NAND gates with varying current drives are developed to meet these specialized goals and are simulated to prove viability for quiet, mixed-signal applications. Analysis and results show that MCML is a superior implementation choice compared toCMOSfor high speed and mixed signal applications due to frequency independent power dissipation and lack of generated noise during operation. Noise results show rail current deviations of 50nA to 300nA during switching over an average operating current of 20µA to 80µA respectively. The multiple order of magnitude difference between noise and signal allow the MCML cells to dissipate constant power and thus perform with no noise added to a system. Additional simulated results of a 31-stage ring oscillator result in a frequency for MCML of 1.57GHz simulated versus the 150.35MHz that MOSIS tested on a fabricated 31-stage CMOS oscillator. The layouts designed for the standard cell library conform to existing On Semiconductor ami06 technology dimensions and allow for design of any logical function to be fabricated. The I/O signals of each cell operate at the same input and output voltage swings which allow seamless integration with each other for implementation in any logical configuration

On chip implement of deadlock avoidance in wormhole networks

This thesis gives a detailed description of the Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) design to avoid deadlocks in Wormhole Networks. Deadlock avoidance is the most critical issue while considering wormhole networks and should be avoided by any routing protocol and algorithm. A novel architecture for the Turn Prohibition Based Routing (TPBR) protocol has been proved to be efficient and was developed as a part of this work. This architecture for implementing the algorithm is divided into three parts. The first part determines the order of selccuon of the nodes, in the network to run the algorithm. The second part deals with the prohibition of the turns through the node which might possibly create a deadlock. The third part constructs a routing table, which will have the route from a source to a destination, considering the prohibited, turns into account. A VHDL model was developed and simulated using IEEE numeric-std package for this architecture. This model was synthesized with Cadence tools and the post synthesis simulations verified the functionality of the architecture. The physical design was created using the standard gate cell libraries and implemented in 0.35-micron CMOS technology

The ALICE TPC, a large 3-dimensional tracking device with fast readout for ultra-high multiplicity events

The design, construction, and commissioning of the ALICE Time-Projection Chamber (TPC) is described. It is the main device for pattern recognition, tracking, and identification of charged particles in the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC. The TPC is cylindrical in shape with a volume close to 90 m^3 and is operated in a 0.5 T solenoidal magnetic field parallel to its axis. In this paper we describe in detail the design considerations for this detector for operation in the extreme multiplicity environment of central Pb--Pb collisions at LHC energy. The implementation of the resulting requirements into hardware (field cage, read-out chambers, electronics), infrastructure (gas and cooling system, laser-calibration system), and software led to many technical innovations which are described along with a presentation of all the major components of the detector, as currently realized. We also report on the performance achieved after completion of the first round of stand-alone calibration runs and demonstrate results close to those specified in the TPC Technical Design Report.Comment: 55 pages, 82 figure