A programmable clock generator for automatic Quality Assurance of LOCx2

TL;DR

This paper presents a programmable clock generator system using Si5338 IC and a C-language DLL to produce adjustable frequency and phase signals for quality assurance of LOCx2 chips in high-speed data transmission applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, flexible clock generation method with adjustable parameters for QA of LOCx2 chips, enhancing testing accuracy and efficiency.

Findings

Successfully generated adjustable frequency clock signals from 5MHz to 200MHz.

Developed a robust DLL for controlling frequency and phase offset.

Validated the system's effectiveness for quality assurance processes.

Abstract

The upgrade of ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter (LAr) Phase-1 trigger requires high-speed, low-latency data transmission to read out the Lar Trigger Digitizer Board (LTDB). A dual-channel transmitter ASIC LOCx2 have been designed and produced. In order to ensure all the LOCx2 chips behave properly, a Quality Assurance needs to be conducted before assembly. The problem I was trying to solve in this project is to yield a clock signal with continuously adjustable frequency and phase offset to generate and control an eye diagram for the QA. By configuring the registers of an any-frequency generator IC, Si5338, the clock signal whose frequency range from 5MHz to 200 MHz have been properly produced. For the purpose of further development, a C-language based DLL which packs up the function of adjusting frequency and setting phase offset was designed and built, and several evaluation was performed to ensure the robustness of DLL.