(Periodic meeting on MCC project progress)
Present: Roberto Beccherle, Giovanni Darbo, Guido Gagliardi, Paolo Morettini, Carlo Schiavi.
After two weeks of little activity, due to end of the year holidays, we met again and we made a status of the project and we discussed about the next steps.
Tools: Interface between SimPix and VCS is now fixed and simulation results are passed between the Verilog (VCS) and SimPix.
Analysis of MCC-I1 known bugs: it is now almost completed. It still remains to be understood the effect of reset to the LV1 counter that is claimed to start with a wrong value after reset.
Design and design validation: we foresee 3 major revision of the Verilog code before MCC-I2 submission:
Rev.1 and rev.2 should be ready rather soon. The SimPix tools will be ready in parallel, while validation will follow in sequence. Rev.3 is a simple change from rev.2, but some work is needed for generation of the netlist.
Layout: we decided to follow the same design cycle used for MCC-I1. Even if the new version of Silicon Ensemble generates a better CK tree with smaller skew, we will keep the same 400 ps of hold time protection at level of synthesis. We will not leave Silicon Ensemble to do other optimisation like replacing buffers or other components. We think that the standard cells library is not good enough to do it.
Schedule: we are aware that the schedule is becoming tight and progress is slower than foreseen. Most of the load is now on Roberto and we will try to reduce some of his testing work. We decided to have a weekly discussion to better follow the progress. Next week we will make a more formal schedule.
Guido is working to prepare an ATLAS note on the PS irradiation results. He will release a draft for next week. He will then give priority to next year irradiation campaign.