| Due to high radiation environments, commercially available electronics are often unsuitable for use in the instrumentation of high energy physics (HEP) experiments. Additionally, due to mechanical and space constraints, the size and materials used in these experiments often eliminate commercial devices from consideration. Given the facts above, physicists themselves lead the design and construction of most subsystems within their experiments. Because of the large scale of today's HEP detectors, their construction would not be possible without the collaborative spirit of thousands of scientists and engineers. Included in the engineering required is the design of application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips. In attempts to conserve effort, designs of circuit blocks are frequently shared among collaborating institutes.;In this dissertation we present the design, verification, fabrication, testing, and qualification of three separate radiation hard ASIC chips as well as a novel fiber-optic transceiver board. Each of these components was developed to be used as custom high energy physics instrumentation. Two of the ASICs, the DORIC12 and VDC12, were designed to form the radiation hard chipset for the fiber-optic transceiver board. The other ASIC, the Hitbus chip, was developed for the ATLAS Diamond Beam Monitor (DBM) to provide the capability for the DBM detector to trigger its own readout. All three ASICs require the use of radiation hardening by design techniques and a mixed-signal design flow. Intermixed in the development of the ASICs is the incorporation of shared intellectual property (IP) blocks. We report on the design and testing of the three ASICs and include insights gained through the process of reusing collaboratively shared designs. We present guidelines for effectively sharing, integrating, and verifying shared block designs. Moreover, we introduce a concise template to assist in the IP sharing process. |
