The SPADIC Project Website

And another snapshot of the SPADIC history ...

November 2011: Layout of the SPADIC v 1.0 chip that was submitted on November 6th 2011. The die has a size of 5mm x 5mm. About one-third of the chips is analog, the rest digital. Each mixed mode channel basically consists of two front-ends (switchable), an ADC, an IIR filter, a hit detection logic and a message builder. Via a switch and further on a sophisticated link protocol the message data of the 32 channels is sent out via two 500 Mbps lvds links. The chip works like an oscilloscope: instead of amplitudes pulses as a whole are read out.

Welcome to the official SPADIC project website. On the following pages you will find very different kinds of information about the SPADIC project in general and on the SPADIC ASIC in particular.

What is SPADIC?

The SPADIC project relates to the name of the SPADIC readout chip (Self-triggered Pulse Amplification and Digitization asIC) which is intended to read out and process small electrical detector signals on a single piece of silicon. The latest SPADIC version 1.0, which is actually the 6th but first full-blown prototype, is a 32-channel mixed-signal readout chip dedicated for the readout of the transition radiation sub-detector (TRD) that will be part of the future CBM heavy-ion experiment at GSI/FAIR. SPADIC 1.0 provides low-noise and low-power analog pre-amplification, 8 bit digitization, IIR signal processing, self-triggered hit detection, neighbor readout, full pulse recording, meta data generation, synchronization mechanisms, and various other features.