A 96-channel, 500 ps resolution TDC board for the BABAR experiment at SLAC

A TDC board has been designed and built to complete the readout of the Instrumented Flux Return of the BABAR experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The board has 96 input channels and makes use of 3 general purpose TDC chips designed at CERN, with time resolution up to 500 ps and configurable via a Test Access Port (IEEE standard 1149). Data are stored before readout in a multi-event buffer. Communication with the BABAR DAQ system is realized through 3 serial lines on the backplane connector. All the logic, including internal registers and the interfaces with the BABAR protocol and the TAP controller, is implemented in two fast FPGAs. The board is designed to work at 59.5 MHz clock frequency