Annual report 2000 - Europractice

More documents

Recommendations

Info

--------- --------------- service center 16 --------- IMEC --------------- A CMOS readout circuit for silicon matrix detector for a cosmic ray spectrometer Application This is the first large-area silicon matrix developed for a research project in order to validate if galactic cosmic rays come from supernova explosions. The ATIC (Advanced Thin Ionisation Calorimeter) is one square meter array of silicon detectors that detect cosmic rays and separates the individual elements from H to Fe. It consists of 4480 separate detector pads that are separately read out using a 16channel custom VLSI chip and digitised to 12-bit precision. A team of scientists from the Louisiana State University and the National Science Balloon Facility launched a helium-filled balloon The ATIC balloon payload from McMurdo, Antarctica on Dec. 28, 2000 to 120,000 feet. It has travelled for 17 days around the South-Pole guided by polar vortex winds. Scientists have now enough data to start to evaluate the experiment. Design There is one front-end channel per detector pad consisting of a charge-sensitive amplifier, a shaping amplifier with a high-dynamic range and a track-and-hold circuit. These reside in 16-channel ASICs. The 16 channels are multiplexed to a common output buffer on the chip. The ASIC is optimised for three independent noise components: channel thermal noise, 1/f noise and shot noise. Tests have shown that the rms noise is 4600 electrons. The ASIC is designed in the Alcatel Microelectronics 2µ CMOS technology. The development was done by IMEC in cooperation with the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington and funded by NASA. Prototype and small volume fabrication The design was prototyped on a EUROPRACTICE MPW run. The prototype samples have been evaluated and tested by NRL. The balloon experiment needed 280 functional ASICs in TQFP52. The production of the 280 (plus some spare parts) has been done through EUROPRACTICE on a Launch of the balloon on 28 Dec from Antarctica small volume run with dedicated mask set. Why EUROPRACTICE ? The ASIC was designed starting from a previous circuit that was fabricated through EUROPRAC- TICE for Cern. In this way the NRL came into contact with IMEC. The prototyping and small volume service offered the most cost-effective solution for fabrication of the small volume of ASICs for this experiment. For further information, please contact NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center James.h.adams@msfc.nasa.gov
Pipeline current mapper Application : measuring holes in pipelines Radiodetection produces and sells measuring equipment for water pipe system analysis. Clean water has become and important matter and Radiodetection has for analysis of water pipes developed an equipment called Pipeline Current Mapper (PCM). The PCM is a product which has been designed to overcome the shortcomings of existing techniques and now provides pipelines engineers with an accurate, cost efficient product to locate holes in pipelines. The ASIC : digital ASIC for DSP operations The electrical design implemented is replacing an FPGA hardware solution. Integration has lowered the electronics parts cost of this equipment to practical 50 %. The ASIC consists of 4 RAM blocks and a DSP core of 50 Kgates. It is implemented in AMS 0.6µ CMOS and has a die size of 36 mm 2 and is packaged in a PQFP-160. Design flow Radiodetection has made the algoritme and VHDL description. In order to implement the design Radiodetection was very active in the front end design as well as the setting up the test benches for the simulation at different stages in the design flow . A netlist was generated from the VHDL code using the AMS 0.6µ CMOS library. BIST (Built-in-self-test) circuitry was added. After simulation sign off, the layout was generated by DELTA. The design phase took in total 12 months from start of specification to delivered prototypes. Prototyping and small volume fabrication Using a Multi Level Mask (4 layers per reticle) set both prototyping and low volume have been manufactured.Prototyping on a MPW run was skipped as it was believed that the prototypes would be first time right. Since Radiodetection had a conservative forecast in volume, EUROPRACTICE implemented some 2000 components whereas the 1000 were immediately delivered to the customer. The rest of the volume production was put on stock for later purchase. Why EUROPRACTICE ? The option of Multi Level Mask set offered a cost effective solution for prototyping and volume up to 2000 units. Different implementation techniques were evaluated from FPGA to digital standard celll ASIC. Further to this the NRE cost versus volume and complexity has been compared with different technologies from 0.35µ up to 0.8µ CMOS. The optimal solution --------- --------------- service center Delta --------------- The 36 mm 2 ASIC in AMS 0.6µ CMOS --------- for this ASIC was the offer from EUROPRACTICE in AMS 0.6µ CMOS technology. For further information, please contact www.radiodetection.com 17
Page 2 and 3: EUROPRACTICE IC service The right c
Page 4 and 5: 2 Table of contents Foreword 1 ASIC
Page 6 and 7: Low cost IC prototyping The cost of
Page 8 and 9: 6 (By courtesy of FHG-IIS). fault c
Page 10 and 11: EUROPRACTICE : Your One-Stop partne
Page 12 and 13: 10 Wafer sort 2 weeks incl. test de
Page 14 and 15: Czech Republic South-America Spain
Page 16 and 17: Examples of small volume ASIC proje
Page 20 and 21: ASIC for measuring capacitive senso
Page 22 and 23: ASIC for the intelligent house Appl
Page 24 and 25: List of Customers per country and n
Page 26 and 27: CUSTOMER TOWN Number of ASICs Unive
Page 28: All information for MPW runs schedu

Annual report 2000 - Europractice

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?