What is the lpGBT ASIC ? Figure 1: The lpGBT silicon die on the package substrate (left) and the finished product with overmold (right) The Low Power Giga Bit Transceiver (lpGBT) is a reliable, radiation-tolerant ASIC designed for use in multiple…
Read moreThe Macro-Pixel ASIC (MPA) and Short-Strip ASIC (SSA) are the new read-out chips used to process particle hit signals of pixel and strip sensors in the upcoming CMS Outer Tracker of the High-Luminosity LHC Upgrade (HL-LHC). The two chips are…
Read moreThe EP-ESE group has finalized the development of a 64 channel picosecond TDC (Time to Digital Converter) ASIC and 20 thousand pieces have been produced. One of the key challenges for future HEP experiments is the development of very high time…
Read moreOver the past year, semiconductor prices have been surging in Europe as demand increases globally. While this is happening with most products, it's been a larger problem given the role of semiconductors in most electronics, such as consumer…
Read moreIn early October, the CERN Medipix Team (EP-ESE-ME) visited the newly installed Medipix3-based spectroscopic CT scanner at the Lausanne University Hospital CHUV, Lausanne. The 3D colour X-ray scanner has been developed in New Zealand by MARS…
Read moreMany experiments in particle physics use custom-built electronics boards in order to perform event triggering and data readout. For many years now, those electronics boards have been using Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for processing data.…
Read moreCERN has the legal obligation to protect the public and the people working on its premises from any unjustified exposure to ionising radiation. In this context, radiation monitoring is one of the main tasks of the Radiation Protection Group.…
Read morePrecise time tagging is a hot topic in High Energy Physics and in other fields. A number of detector technologies are available but there are few multi-channel front-end ASICs capable of providing time tagging in the region of 10ps. This article…
Read moreASIC technology and designs are becoming increasingly complex but bring potentially huge benefits to HEP experiments (see also previous EP article "A bright future for microelectronics"). Figure 1 summarises the evolution of CMOS technologies in the…
Read moreOptical links have become ubiquitous in High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments to transport data generated from the particle detectors and other control points along the accelerator to the processing electronics. So far, links based on both single-…
Read more