1. Pico-second TDC Schedule & Production

2. schedule We are ~1 year late compared to initial schedule
Underestimated 130nm -> 65nm technology mapping
Timing problems in high speed time decoder: 2.56GHz -> 1.28GHz
Pico-second time resolution not easy ( PLL jitter, DLL mismatch, timing distribution, power supply noise, etc.)
Additional features
Did not get expected student to help on configuration/test (Engineer trainee will come from ~June to help with testing)
Prototype submission: April 2017
Initial bare die test: June – July
At CERN only to verify chip is alive
Packaging of chips: Aug. – Sep. 2017
Testing of packaged chips: Oct. – Dec. 2017
At CERN plus selected users
Possible design corrections: Jan. – Feb. 2018
Production submission: March 2018
Production chip test/verification: May 2018
Production testing: June – August 2018
Chips available on quantity: Sep, 2018

3. PicoTDC users and quantities
Project
Test chips
Final quantity
Certainty
CBM 5
2100 9
SuperFRS
5 (CBM)
100
Crispin ?
CAEN
LHCb Torch
1600 6
MPD/NICA
150
IHEP
CMS-TOTEM PPS
<10
CMS timing layer
50 ?
10000
4 ?
ATLAS forward proton 20 10
Other ? (RD51, ?)
Total
<100 (200)
3k – 20k

4. Production scenarios
Masks, engineering run and packaging are dominating costs
Si costs: 12inch wafer (5k$) = 2-3k working PicoTDCs
Dedicated MLM engineering run + packaging: ~600k
3k chips: 600k/3k = 200CHF/chip
20k chips: (600k+200k)/20k = 40CHF/chip
Shared MLM engineering run + packaging: 350k
3k chips: 350k/3k = 120CHF/chip
20k chips: (350k+200k)/20k = 30CHF/chip
Realistic scenario: 10k chips
Shared MLM engineering run: 350k
Packaging + etc.: 150k
Cost: (500kCHF/10k): 50CHF/chip
(if we can only sell half of these then 100CHF/chip)
~1-2 CHF per channel
There will obviously be a modulation of price according to volume, scientific or commercial, CERN or non-CERN use.