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The University of Chicago
Cadence Program Member
The role of the Electronics Development Group of the University of Chicago is to work with students and faculty members on cutting edge electronic design. The policy of the Electronics Development Group is to have graduate students design, route, layout, verify and test custom design chips (ASICS) and printed circuit boards under the supervision of electronics engineers. Along with students at the University of Chicago, students from other institutions and young scientists also are invited to use the facilities of the shop for their own designs.

EDG Cadence Software Notes

The following are our notes from working with Cadence Virtuoso and the IBM Design Kit. Cadence requires the following disclaimer:

Information is provided 'as is' without warranty of any kind. No statement is made and no attempt has been made to examine the information, either with respect to operability, origin, authorship, or otherwise. Please use this information at your own risk. We recommend using it on a copy of your data to be sure you understand with it does under your conditions. Keep your master intact until you are satisfied with the use of this information within your environment.

EDG Current Projects
ATLAS gFEX Electronics
Cadence tools used: SPB (PCB)

The global feature extraction (gFEX) electronics board is a hardware-based jet finder for the ATLAS trigger system which will be operational for Run 3 of the LHC. This system can process the entire calorimeter on a single electronics board.

ANNIE ACDC Card
Cadence tools used: SPB (PCB)

Design of a printed circuit board to handle output from PSEC4 chips in ANNIE experiment.

ATLAS Tile Calorimeter Electronics
Cadence tools used: SPB (PCB)

Design of a front-end and data acquisition system for the hadron calorimeter of the ATLAS experiment.

DAMIC ODILE
Cadence tools used: SPB (PCB)

The ODILE is a CCD Control and Data Acquisition module for the DArk Matter In CCDs experiment, at the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane in France. This motherboard incorporates a 4-channel, 20-BIT ADC, to digitize the video signals, a controller used for the required CCD clocks and voltage biases, and a Gigabit Ethernet interface for data transfer.

Large-Area Picosecond Photo-Detectors (LAPPD)
Cadence tools used: SPB (PCB)

Developing a few data acquisition modules based on a chip designed by a former student. The electronics will help with measuring the energy and direction of the quarks and gluons produced in the collisions.

KOTO DAQ
Cadence tools used: SPB (PCB)

Developing a new cluster trigger system which consists of a crate distribution and topology module and an optical fiber center module for an experiment at KOTO.

Physics 335 - Advanced Experimental Physics Project
In order to carry out an Advanced Experimental Physics Project, the student must find a faculty sponsor who agrees to supervise the work. The project must introduce the student to several aspects of an experiment---building the equipment, data taking, data analysis, and presentation. All Cadence tools are available to the students for their project work.

Physics 226 - Electronics
From the course catalog: The goal of this hands-on experimental course is to develop confidence, understanding and design ability in modern electronics. This is not a course in the physics of semiconductors. In two lab sessions a week, students explore the properties of diodes, transistors, amplifiers, operational amplifiers, oscillators, field effect transistors, logic gates, digital circuits, analog-to-digital, and digital-to-analog converters, phase-locked loops and more.

All Cadence software is available to students in Physics 226 to use for their final design project

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Updated: November 2021
Person resposible for this site: Mary Heintz (change AT to @ in email address)