TiCkS is a flexible White Rabbit based time-stamping board.
Project description
The TiCkS board is an FMC carrier that can hold one FMC card and an SFP connector. The FMC mezzanine slot uses a low-pin count connector. This board is optimised for cost and is usable with most of the FMC cards designed within the OHR project (e.g. ADC cards, Fine Delay).
Boards with a very similar architecture are available for the VME bus
(SVEC - Simple VME FMC Carrier
(SVEC)) and for the PXI
Express bus (SPEXI - Simple PXI express FMC Carrier Board
(SPEXI)).
Other FMC projects and the FMC standard are described in FMC
Projects.
Main Features
- 1x Xilinx Spartan6 FPGA (XC6SLX45T-3FGG484C)
- footprint compatible XC6SLX100T and XC6SLX150T
- FMC slot with low pin count (LPC) connector
- Vadj fixed to 2.5V
- FMC connectivity: all 34 differential pairs connected, 1 GTP transceiver with clock, 2 clock pairs, JTAG, I2C
- No dedicated clock signals from Carrier to FMC (only available on HPC pins)
- Clocking resources
- 1x 10-280 MHz I2C Programmable XO Oscillator, starts up at 100 MHz (Silicon Labs Si570, 570BBC000121DG, freely usable)
- 1x 25 MHz TCXO (MCOT7250003V300000RA) controlled by a DAC with SPI interface (AD5662, used by White Rabbit PTP core)
- 1x 20 MHz VCXO (IQD VCXO026156) controlled by a DAC with SPI interface (AD5662, used by White Rabbit PTP core)
- 1x low-jitter frequency synthesizer (TI CDCM61004, fixed configuration, Fout=125 MHz, used by White Rabbit PTP core)
- On board memory
- 1x SPI 32Mbit flash PROM for multiboot FPGA powerup configuration, storage of the FPGA firmware or of critical data (M25P32-VMF6P - EOL)
- Miscellaneous
- on-board thermometer IC (DS18B20U+)
- unique 64-bit identifier (DS18B20U+)
- Front panel containing
- 1x Small Formfactor Pluggable (SFP) cage for fibre-optic transceiver (WhiteRabbit support). 1.25 and 2.5 Gbps.
- Programmable Red and Green LEDs
- FMC front panel
- Internal connectors
- 1x JTAG header for Xilinx programming during debugging
- 1x mini USB AB (USB-UART bridge)
- FPGA configuration. The FPGA can optionally be programmed from:
- JTAG header
- SPI 32Mbit flash PROM
- Stand-alone features
- External 9V to 36V power supply connector
- mini USB connector
- 3 LEDs
- Power consumption: 5-12 Watt, depending on application
- Optimised for cost
- 6-layer PCB
- Optional cooling fan for the mezzanine.
Project information
-
TiCkS: a flexible White-Rabbit based time-stamping
board
C. Champion et al, CTA Consortium, ICALEPCS 2017 - Official production documentation:
- Getting Started with the SPEC (project)
- System architecture
- Users
- Software
- Frequently Asked Questions
Releases
- Hardware
- SPEC V4-0
-
SPEC V4-1: same V4-0 base board with additional board
supporting a fan
- Only needed in badly ventilated PCs using highly dissipating cards such as the FMC DEL 1ns 4cha
Contacts
Commercial producers
- Related products:
- SPEC BOX - 1 or 3 Standalone Nodes Box, Seven Solutions, Spain
- SPEC100 - with larger XC6SLX100T FPGA (PCI Device ID: 0x1A2) SPEC XL - Seven Solutions, Spain
- SPEC150 - with larger XC6SLX150T FPGA (PCI Device ID: 0x1A3) and larger FLASH memory (M25P64 instead of M25P32) Seven Solutions, Spain
General questions about project
- Cédric Champion
- User's manual (https://mdpunch.pages.in2p3.fr/ticks/MainText.html#)
Status
Date | Event |
---|---|
10-11-2014 | Start of project. Design is done by APC Engineers for CTA Project, based on the FMC PCIe Carrier. |
29-06-2010 | Main features reviewed by JS, PA, MC & EB. Design can start. |
12-07-2010 | First schematics published. Ready for review. |
10-09-2010 | Review comments integrated. Start of PCB layout. |
05-10-2010 | PCB layout review held. |
05-11-2010 | Design finished. |
19-01-2011 | Three prototypes arrived at CERN. |
18-04-2011 | First V1.1 prototypes received, start testing them. |
01-07-2011 | Three V2 boards received. One fully tested OK. Two only shortly tested. |
17-07-2011 | Order placed for 70 SPEC cards at Seven Solutions. |
23-08-2011 | V4 released. Solves a minor mechanical problem with the SFP connector. |
14-03-2012 | CERN accepted the 10 preseries boards that were received on 7 March. |
14-11-2019 | TiCkS boards passed most restrictive EMC tests for industrial and domestic classes. Test report. |
30-03-2015 | Fan design released in EDMS (V4-1). |
11-01-2018 | Start of study of a new design. Contact Erik van der Bij - CERN |
13 November 2020