An asynchronous data acquisition ASIC with a data-push architecture

We report on a digital circuit for data acquisition that has been developed for high energy physics applications. Its function is to receive asynchronous voltage pulses, time-stamp them individually and transmit them sequentially on an external bus. A 16-channel design has been fabricated as an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) using the HP 1.2 μm double-metal, single-polysilicon process. Test results made on prototype chips indicate that the circuit performs within specifications for an operating clock frequency of 25 MHz and a working environment temperature of 0 C to 40 C. (orig.)