Time memory cell VLSI for the PHENIX drift chamber

A high-precision Time-to-Digital-Converter VLSI, TMC-PHX1, was developed for the PHENIX drift chamber. The chip contains 4 channels of TDC with two stages of data buffering and a trigger buffering which are necessary for very high rate experiments. In addition to the fixed data size readout, the chip also supports zero-suppression mode readout. The chip records both rising and falling edge timings, and has a least timing count of 0.83 ns/bit and 1.66 ns/bit respectively. A level 1 buffer has a recording depth of 6.8 μsec and a readout FIFO has a depth of 128 words. High precision timing was derived from an asymmetric ring oscillator stabilized with a PLL. The chip runs at 4 times faster clock (37.6 MHz) of the RHIC bunch clock, and was fabricated with 0.5 μm CMOS gate-array technology