CARIOCA (Cern and RIO Current Amplifier). The CARIOCA chip has 8 binary output, therefore DIALOG has 16 PCH as input channels and has up to 8 LCH as output channels. DIALOG integrates fundamental tools required for the Muon chambers time alignment and monitoring and for the Muon Trigger operation. It also provide many other features for system control and diagnostic. In the DIALOG block scheme all the different functional blocks are showed. Following the processing stages from input to output there are: the Input Block, the Programmable Delayer and digital Shaper (ADC- DLL) Block, the Masking Block, the Logical Channels generation Block. There are also the ASD Thresholds Block and the Counters Block. All DIALOG configurable tools are writeable and readable by I 2 C interface. The DIALOG features are: A Test Bench for full characterization of the DIALOG chip S.Cadeddu 1, V. De Leo 1, C. Deplano 1,2, A. Lai 1 1 INFN Cagliari Italy; 2 Università di Cagliari Italy BX ID ns INTERACTION DETECTION   25 ns DIALOG is a fundamental building block in the front-end electronics of the Muon Detector of the LCHb experiment. LHCb, currently under construction at the CERN LHC, will study the CP DIALOG (DIagnostic time Adjustment and LOGics) Measurements of 449 DIALOG circuits CARIOCA 8000 DIALOG 4000 SYNC LHCb experiment The trigger processor performs its algorithms on a binary space point information sent by the front-end electronics: 126k channels (PCH) are output from the detector. The granularity needed by the trigger is coarser (26k channels LCH) to minimize sustainable noise level and detection rate per channel. The LHCb Bunch Crossing (BX) frequency is 40 MHz. To assign the correct BX identifier to each event, it is necessary to equalize all the different contributions to PCH signal delays, before sending the information to the trigger. The main delay contributions are: µ-chambers time distribution  25 ns (4 ns rms) Particle time of flight Different cables length The DIALOG main tasks are to realize PCH reduction already at the front-end level and to make possible a proper detector time alignment, channel by channel. Both these tasks are configurable to allow different possible combinations, according to each physical channel position inside the detector. In the Muon System there are 8000 DIALOG. SYNC IC MUON CHAMBER (MWPC/3-GEM) F/E board 8PCH ASD 8LCH DIALOG 8PCH F/E board DIALOG CUSTOM IC DELAY AND WIDTH ADJUSTMENT LOGICAL CHANNEL GENERATION THRESHOLDS FOR ASD CHIPS ASD: CARIOCA CHIP ANALOG SHAPER DISCRIMINATOR ON DETECTOR ELECTRONICS I 2 C MASTER LOW VOLTAGE CONTROLS CALIBRATION PULSES SERVICE board (on crates) SYNCHRONIZATION TIME (PHASE) MEASUREMENT DATA FORMATTING DATA TO MUON TRIGGER OFF DETECTOR ELECTRONICS 10m cabling (LVDS) DATA TO DAQ RECONSTRUCTION COUNTING ROOM 1.Programmable input signals time adjustment: (31 steps of ~ MHz) by an external selection or an automatic calibration using a DLL (settable period ~ 59 ns [17 MHz]÷ 21 ns [48 MHz]). Typical max delay  50 ns; Max possible delay  120 ns 17 MHz). Differential Non Linearity (DNL) < ± 0.3 LSB. 2.Programmable output signals width adjustment: (8 steps of ~ 3.2 ns 40 MHz). Typical shaping  28 ns. DNL < ± 0.2 LSB. 3.Possibility to put a MASK on every input channel. 4.Logical Channel generation according with the trigger granularity (OR2; OR4; OR8). 5.Sixteen 24-bit rate counters to monitor PCH different threshold levels for ASD chips discriminator. Each is programmable independently using a DAC (2.2 mV of resolution) plus a linear output driver: o16 CARIOCA levels operate in a (0.625  1.2) V range with an R load = 24 kΩ; o2 ASDQ levels operate in a (0  625) mV range with an R load = 1 kΩ; 7.Internal Pattern generation to test purposes. 8.2 ASD pulse generation signals with programmable time adjustment for ASD chips test. 9.I 2 C interface (93 registers) to configure all DIALOG tools. 10.Triple-voted and auto-corrected register for better SEU (Single Event Upset) immunity, both configuration and state machines. DIALOG pinout DIALOG block scheme DIALOG CORE: ADC-DLL DIALOG has 113 pin, a width of 3875 µm and a length of 4900 µm. The power consumption is about 150 mA at a bias voltage of 2.5 V. gnd 9 ASD threshold levels gnd vdd gnd vdd gnd vdd 8 LVDS Physical Channels LVDS ASDQ pulse 8 LVDS Logical Channels CARIOCA pulse LVDS I 2 C in LVDS I 2 C outResetAddress core Scalers thresholds DLL ADC Pulse + Delay Lines 9 ASD threshold levels 8 LVDS Physical Channels LVDS ASDQ pulse 20 m 12 m DTS (DIALOG Test System) The need to characterize the DIALOG circuits completely in a short time has required designing a dedicate Test System. The DTS is a portable system composed by 3 custom PCB (the ROUTER board, the DIALOG board TDC board and the TDC board), one PC and a custom C software. The DTS hardware is controlled by the PC program via an I 2 C interface. DIALOG is placed on the DIALOG board which has a Zero Insertion Force socket to allow the change of the device under test. All DIALOG input signals are provided by the ROUTER board. The DIALOG output LCH and pulse signals are connected both to the ROUTER board, for DIALOG digital functionalities test, and to the TDC board for the time measurements of signals delay and width. Four commercial 12-bit ADC are mounted on The main board of the DTS is the TDC board which has 4 commercial TDC driven by an FPGA. On the board there are 1 common start input signal and up to 32 stop input signals, 8 for each TDC, which can be individually enabled and configured. To allow both LVDS and LVTTL stop signals logics, 8 LVDS to LVTTL converters are soldered on board. The time measurements can be done for a individually selectable positive or negative edge of the common start and of the stop input signals. The measurements are done in a time interval up to 94 µs starting from 40 ns after the common start selected edge signal (72 ns of resolution). the DIALOG board to measure the 18 threshold levels with a resolution of 0.6 mV of LSB. Each ADC can be independently configured and read by the PC via the I 2 C interface. The I 2 C signals are provided by the ROUTER board. The ROUTER board is used to interface DIALOG with the software program and contains the I 2 C registers to generate the DIALOG PCH input signals and to capture the LCH outputs. The main board of the DTS is the TDC board which has 4 commercial TDC driven by an FPGA. On the board there are 1 common start input signal and up to 32 stop input signals, 8 for each TDC, which can be individually enabled and configured. To allow both LVDS and LVTTL stop signals logics, 8 LVDS to LVTTL converters are soldered on board. The time measurements can be done for a individually selectable positive or negative edge of the common start and of the stop input signals. The measurements are done in a time interval up to 94 µs starting from 40 ns after the common start selected edge signal (72 ns of resolution). After each power-on the FPGA can be accessed via I 2 C by the software program (69 8-bit registers). To test one DIALOG, two TDC are used: one for the 8 LCH and the other for the 2 pulse signals. Two kind of measurements were done: I 2 C signals 16 LVDS PCH DIALOG input 8 LVDS LCH DIALOG output I 2 C signals Reset Common Start Reset ROUTER BOARD DIALOG BOARD TDC BOARD REPORT FILES TEST ROUTINES I 2 C MASTER  Time DELAY: made on the stop inputs positive edge, to verify the programmable delays set on DIALOG for each LCH and pulse signal; The characterization of DIALOG (at room temperature) is managed by a custom C program and takes about 2 minutes. It consists of DIALOG power consumption measurement, test of digital functionalities and test of analog features. A sample of 480 DIALOG chips was tested with the DTS, 21 of which were rejected for power consumption (about 4 mA for 19 chips and 1 A for 2 chips) and other 10 were rejected for digital procedure failure. 330 DIALOG of the remaining 449 are validated as “good”. For each threshold level, the linearity curve and the DNL are measured inside the full DAC range (0  255) in a few seconds. The maximum peak to peak voltage variation is 35 mV. Measurements of time delay and width were done for each LCH at the DLL locking code 40 MHz) and for the DLL code 0 and 255. The same type of delay measurements were done for pulse signals also. All the time and the voltage measurements are stored in two report files and later processed with a dedicated software. These files are analyzed if the DIALOG power consumption is in a range of (150 ± 20) mA and if the digital functionalities test passes.  Time WIDTH: made both on the positive and on the negative edge of the LCH signals to verify the programmable width. CARIOCA threshold levels measurements DNL y = p 0 + p 1 x Slope of thresholds fit Intercept of threshold fit LCH outputs time measurements 15 delay units of 1.6 ns each 31 delay units of 1.6 ns each 8 width units of 3.5 ns each DLL calibrated at nominal 40 MHz frequency violation and B mesons rare decays. The role of the LHCb Muon Detector is to detect muons tracks with high transverse momentum, as a signature of a B meson decay. This is a crucial information for the LHCb first trigger level. The LHCb Muon Detector consists of 5 stations along the beam axis and is based on 3-GEM detectors and MWPC. DIALOG is developed in CMOS IBM 0.25 µm radiation tolerant technology. It is installed directly on the Muon chambers on a printed circuit board named CARDIAC (CARioca and DIAlog Card). In each CARDIAC DIALOG is placed after two Amplifier Shaper Discriminator (ASD) chips, called Analog Sorting Intervals We present a semi-automatic test system designed for the complete characterization of the DIALOG integrated circuit (see IEEE TNS 2004 N18-6). The DTS (DIALOG Test System) checks all the chip digital functionalities. It measures the DIALOG output channels programmable time delay and width with 72 ps of resolution. DIALOG threshold voltage outputs are measured with 0.6 mV of resolution. The complete characterization of one chip takes 2minutes. The measurements done allow the definition of the DIALOG test procedure and the proper analog performances sorting intervals, needed for a safe selection of the DIALOG mass production chips (about devices).