1. Introduction LOI Hardware activities and GBT Simulations
2010 beam conditions and upgrade
DC-DC converters
Radiation tests
Calorimeter Upgrade Meeting
Frédéric Machefert
Friday December 10th, 2010

2. LOI and FPGA in radiation environment
The LOI can be downloaded from
TT, Tracking, simulation and Physics are missing
TT and tracking preliminary versions can be reached from
FPGA in radiation environment
HEP/CERN working group on the use of FPGA's in radiation environments
Group initiated by Jorgen Christiansen
If you are interested please contact Ken Wyllie
Next year → proposed agenda (follows electronics upgrade meeting)
11th February
15th April
10th June
12nd August
14th October
9th December

3. Hardware activities in 2011 and GBT
The future digital prototypes are linked to the GBT progress
The proposal is to include the GBT acquisition on the next digital prototype
When will it be available ?
GBT is at the development level. According to Ken
GBT will probably not be ready for users in 2011
It is possible to implement an acquisition with ALTERA
This would require an effort on a design which would be far from the final one
The idea of GBT mezzanine is advancing
Difficult for data acquisition to make it fit with constraints of different sub-detectors
May be a good idea for ECS (upstream fibre)
The full functionality readout of the optical links would not be ready before (Jean-Pierre Cachemiche)
May hope in 2011 a “small” set-up to provide to the users (see next slide) :
capture data on few GBT links,
read them on a NIOS TCP/IP server through a 1 GbE link on a PC,
send ECS commands and receive status through a GbE path to a GBT link,
Distribute a synchronous 40 MHz clock on few GBT links
eventually send few TFC-like commands

4. Mini-Readout setup (Jean-Pierre)
But the price of such a mini-setup in 2011 would be close to 10k€ (!)
Hence suppose no new digital prototype before 2012
Depending on the progress, may imagine start design (drawing) by the end of 2011

5. Simulations for the upgrade
A first set of data has been produced (Gauss)
Luminosity : 2x1033 cm-2s-1
New samples may be produced at lower luminosity in the future
This sample should help people get experience with the upgrade conditions
LHC structure is NOT implemented in the simulation software
This is not planned in the near future
Major modification
Should be agreed during a dedicated meeting
Impact on pile-up, spill-over, subtraction, packing studies, …
But it should be possible to emulate the structure into Boole (user private code)
Gauss output are kept in order to permit users to run Boole
New simulation includes modification of the VELO → pixel detector
Calorimeter includes SPD/PS
Should not be difficult to remove them from the simulation (break trigger if still in ?)
Linked to the decision on the PS/SPD
Most of the sub-detectors started to work on the simulations for the upgrade
We should find people in the calorimeter group to work on simulations !
Next upgrade simulation meeting in January

6. 2010 beam conditions and the upgrade
Upgrade goal
Increase by a factor 5 the statistics
Keep muon trigger efficiency and improve (2x) hadron efficiency
40MHz software trigger
Detector efficiency overall maintained with respect to nominal
Because of small number of packets we worked in 2010 mostly at a m (number of interactions per crossing) close to what should be experienced during the upgrade
Nominal should be m<1 (0.4)
Often ran at m>2
Ghosts appear in the tracking
Partially solved by cutting on GEC
SPD multiplicity
But cut also interesting events !
Cannot pay such a price for the upgrade
Mostly involves the tracking of LHCb
But we can use the present data to get a flavour of the upgrade conditions

7. DC-DC converter A DC-DC convertor is being designed for the upgrade
This would replace the present regulators
This may be dangerous for the analog electronics
Federico Fassio is “quite positive about usage in analog electronics” (Ken)
Still we need to check !
Idea : solder a DC-DC converter on a digital prototype → to be looked at
Specifications:
input voltage: 5 to 12V
output voltage: down to 1V but keep in mind this affects efficiency
output current: up to 3A
efficiency around 80% for conversion 10 to 2.5V (different in other
conditions)
footprint of the full DCDC plug-in board (excluding the area dedicated to the connectors, which can be customized to a large extend): about 13x16mm and 10mm height. These can still change by 1-2mm in each direction.
Experts recommend it to be cooled
There have been quite a lot of measurements on noise immunity etc. You can find various presentations at the link on the LHCb electronics upgrade page to the power working group:

8. Radiation tests of FPGA
Syracuse performed an irradiation of the Actel A3PE 1500 FPGA
Beam of 226MeV
Test was very ambitious
But could not exploit it because of problems during the test
FPGA died after 90krad
No problem for us
Probably a latch-up
The behaviour of the chip is not understood (timing issues, etc...)
Syracuse is discussing with Actel
The plan is to have another irradiation with the same component (Feb/March 2011)
Comment from Syracuse : This FPGA seems to have a number of drawbacks, including timing and operational issues (and perhaps even VHDL implementation)
Idea of having common irradiation tests with CMS at CERN facilities
neutrons and gammas
Failure

9. Conclusion Electronics milestones Analog
Characterisation of the Analog part
Discrete solution
ASIC
Digital
Implement Acquisition (January)
Implement packing
Test the A3PE chip
Timings, Flipping bits, …
Current question
We need to be convinced of the (un)usefulness of the SPD/PS
Work to be done (and not covered)
See above → SPD/PS
Simulations of the calorimeter for the upgrade