Technologies Available for License

2021-009: EDWARD - Event Driven with Access and Reset Decoder readout architecture with non-priority arbitration for multichannel data sources

Invention: 2021-009

Patent Status: Application Number was published on October 20, 2022

For technical and licensing related questions, email tcp@bnl.gov.

Summary

enlarge

Scheme: Block-level diagram of the readout management system.

Data readout or computer network systems that either collect or transmit data starve for optimal usage of the available bandwidth of the links. There is a need to build systems that can make collecting data from spatially distributed sources such as distributed grid of in-a-field deployed sensors, computers on a network or cells in content addressable memories, processing channels in neuromorphic chips, or elements in 1D (strip) or 2D (pixelated) radiation detectors more efficient and economical. This Brookhaven invention, EDWARD, describes the protocol, architecture and features for a readout ASIC that can acquire data from multiple sources, operating asynchronously such that the order of channels to transmit concurrently is independent of the position of the data source.

Description

EDWARD, the new event driven data readout system (scheme) is adapted for the efficient transmission of data from multiple data sources. The data sources can be one-dimensional structures, two-dimensional structures, and/or any other form. EDWARD is event-driven i.e., no synchronization is needed for asynchronous input data. EDWARD not only allows sending additional data, beyond the active channel but also allows sending analog data together with digital ones. It provides a reliable mechanism that prevents the collision of channels accessing a common data bus. No channel starves for allocation of time slots for sending their data off, i.e. there is no situation when an access to the readout resources is unfairly or perpetually denied to some of the channels. The mechanism is based on arbitration tree build as a binary tree using arbitration cell that have mutually exclusive outputs. The EDWARD architecture is an alternative for the commonly used token-passing scheme and does not carry-on deficiencies of the widely used Token Passing Architecture such as the deterministic order of the read-out channels and a varied delay in accessing the channels as a function of their location at the beginning or at the end of the token passing route.

Journal Publication & Intellectual Property

• Event driven readout architecture with non-priority arbitration for radiation detectors (.pdf)
• WO 2022/221068 A1 (.pdf)
• Investigation of Timing Properties for an Event Driven with Access and Reset Decoder Readout Architecture for a Pixel Array (.pdf)