Chapter 5
Conclusion and Outlook
5.1 Conclusion
A major upgrade of the ALICE experiment will be realised in 2019/2020. The goal is
to be able to inspect all heavy-ion collisions at the full expected LHC luminosity of
6 × 10
27 cm
−2 s
−1 at 50 kHz interaction rate. The SAMPA ASIC has been designed
to support a new, faster readout of the Time Projection Chamber (TPC) and Muon
Tracking Chamber (MCH) detectors. The third version of the device has passed
the production readiness review for both TPC [1] and MCH [2] and so fulfils the
requirements set up by the detectors and the design can be considered as completely
functional according to specifications.
The device has also been evaluated in test beams with partial detector setups.
Figure 5.1 shows the result of a noise measurement, by the MCH, of one quadrant
with 640 channels (10 FECs, 20 SAMPA devices) and the recorded beam profile of
the 120 GeV Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) beam used for testing [3]. Figure 5.2
shows the TPC noise and pedestal test results for 960 channels (6 FECs, 30 SAMPA
devices) and Fig. 5.3 shows a particle crossing the same chamber [4].
The amount of time spent on verification versus design is usually taken to be
between 40 and 70%. If we base our analysis on the amount of code written, we can
see in Table 5.1 that we are at the upper range of this level for the SAMPA design.
A few issues were found during functional testing of the v2 device and the testing
effort was stepped up for verification of the v3 design. As only one hard to detect
issue
1 has been discovered for the v3 device the design could be considered to be
verified sufficiently. The design and verification effort has passed an engineering
design review [5], as well as a production readiness review [6].
Due to the changes in specifications from the early concepts to the final design, the
device is more complex than what is currently needed for the two primary detectors.
1 See Sect. 4.3.5. That part of the design was borrowed from CERN and so is also likely present in
several other CERN devices.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
A. Velure, A Digital Signal Processor for Particle Detectors, Springer Theses,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71559-5_5
125
Conclusion and Outlook
5.1 Conclusion
A major upgrade of the ALICE experiment will be realised in 2019/2020. The goal is
to be able to inspect all heavy-ion collisions at the full expected LHC luminosity of
6 × 10
27 cm
−2 s
−1 at 50 kHz interaction rate. The SAMPA ASIC has been designed
to support a new, faster readout of the Time Projection Chamber (TPC) and Muon
Tracking Chamber (MCH) detectors. The third version of the device has passed
the production readiness review for both TPC [1] and MCH [2] and so fulfils the
requirements set up by the detectors and the design can be considered as completely
functional according to specifications.
The device has also been evaluated in test beams with partial detector setups.
Figure 5.1 shows the result of a noise measurement, by the MCH, of one quadrant
with 640 channels (10 FECs, 20 SAMPA devices) and the recorded beam profile of
the 120 GeV Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) beam used for testing [3]. Figure 5.2
shows the TPC noise and pedestal test results for 960 channels (6 FECs, 30 SAMPA
devices) and Fig. 5.3 shows a particle crossing the same chamber [4].
The amount of time spent on verification versus design is usually taken to be
between 40 and 70%. If we base our analysis on the amount of code written, we can
see in Table 5.1 that we are at the upper range of this level for the SAMPA design.
A few issues were found during functional testing of the v2 device and the testing
effort was stepped up for verification of the v3 design. As only one hard to detect
issue
1 has been discovered for the v3 device the design could be considered to be
verified sufficiently. The design and verification effort has passed an engineering
design review [5], as well as a production readiness review [6].
Due to the changes in specifications from the early concepts to the final design, the
device is more complex than what is currently needed for the two primary detectors.
1 See Sect. 4.3.5. That part of the design was borrowed from CERN and so is also likely present in
several other CERN devices.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
A. Velure, A Digital Signal Processor for Particle Detectors, Springer Theses,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71559-5_5
125