SPEC-TDC Build Scripts

Overview

The SPEC-TDC is a Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) board mounted on a SPEC (Simple PCIe FMC Carrier) PCIe carrier. It provides sub-nanosecond timestamping for up to 5 input channels and is used in the SBND detector's data acquisition system.

This repository provides a build.py script that automates cloning, patching, building, staging, and installing all required kernel modules and userspace tools from source.

What Gets Built

The build.py script builds the following components in dependency order:

Component	Description
cheby	Register map generator (Python tool, build-time dependency)
wishbone-gen	Wishbone register generator (build-time dependency)
fpga-manager	FPGA firmware loader kernel module
general-cores	OHWR I2C, SPI, and HTVIC interrupt controller kernel modules
spec	SPEC PCIe carrier kernel driver (spec.ko)
fmc-tdc	FMC-TDC kernel driver, FMC bus modules, and userspace tools
zio-tdc	ZIO framework kernel modules (built from fmc-tdc's bundled submodule)

Installed Kernel Modules

• fpga-manager: fpga-mgr.ko
• general-cores: htvic.ko, i2c-ocores.ko, spi-ocores.ko
• SPEC carrier: spec.ko
• FMC bus: fmc.ko, fmc-chardev.ko, fmc-fakedev.ko, fmc-trivial.ko, fmc-write-eeprom.ko
• FMC-TDC: fmc-tdc.ko
• ZIO framework: zio.ko, zio-buf-vmalloc.ko, zio-trig-hrt.ko, zio-trig-irq.ko, zio-trig-timer.ko, zio-ad788x.ko, zio-fake-dtc.ko, zio-gpio.ko, zio-irq-tdc.ko, zio-loop.ko, zio-mini.ko, zio-vmk8055.ko, zio-zero.ko

Installed Userspace Tools

fmc-tdc-list, fmc-tdc-term, fmc-tdc-temperature, fmc-tdc-time, fmc-tdc-tstamp, fmc-tdc-offset

Installation steps (copying modules to /lib/modules/, running depmod) require root. The system is configured to use ksu for privilege escalation. Passwordless ksu access must be configured before running a build with installation enabled.

Quick Start

cd spectdc-build-scripts
python3 build.py --fresh

See INSTRUCTIONS.md for full prerequisites and detailed usage.