The STAR cluster-finder ASIC

STAR is a large TPC-based experiment at RHIC, the relativistic heavy ion collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The STAR experiment reads out a TPC and an SVT (silicon vertex tracker), both of which require in-line pedestal subtraction, compression of ADC values from 10-bit to 8-bit, and location of time sequences representing responses to charged-particle tracks. The STAR cluster finder ASIC responds to all of these needs. Pedestal subtraction and compression are performed using lookup tables in attached RAM. The authors describe its design and implementation, as well as testing methodology and results of tests performed on foundry prototypes