Columbia University engineers have invented an “extreme” chip that can survive the unusually harsh environment of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) during high-energy experiments exploring fundamental questions about the universe, such as the LHC’s 2012 discovery of the previously theoretical Higgs boson.
Unlike commercially made computer chip designs, which typically fail under the bombardment of radiation emitted when opposing, near-light-speed particles are coaxed to collide in the multi-billion-dollar, 17-mile-long facility. The one-of-a-kind Columbia chip can maintain data and logic integrity during the facility’s harshest experiments.
The team behind the extreme chip’s creation said adding a ruggedized processor that can survive in this environment could open previously unavailable avenues of research for physicists probing the nature of the smallest particles that make up the very fabric of the universe.
“The next discoveries made with the LHC will be triggered by one Columbia chip and measured by another,” explained Peter Kinget, professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia Engineering and the lead author of the study detailing the team’s work.
Because scientific experiments often require specialized tools, sensors, environments, and other unique pieces of equipment, researchers are often required to adapt more widely available components to meet their needs. In more extreme circumstances, engineers are even forced to manufacture customized, bespoke tools and components.
According to Kinget, when the market is as small as the one for ruggedized processors capable of surviving in a particle supercollider, even a component as widely available as a computer chip may not exist in such a diverse array of styles.
“Industry just couldn’t justify the effort,” the professor said. “So, academia had to step in.”
For the highest-energy experiments, the team aimed to capture the electrical signals generated during LHC particle collisions and convert them into digital signals that could be quantified and analyzed. To achieve this, they explored a category of devices known as analog-to-digital converters, or ADCs. In the facility’s ATLAS detector, these electrical pulses are currently measured by a liquid argon calorimeter, which uses a massive vat filled with ultra-cold argon gas. Although costly and complex to operate, the calorimeter is the only way to capture an electronic trace of each particle collision in the collider’s extreme environment.
Hoping to design a radiation-resistant extreme chip as a cheaper and simpler alternative, the team began by testing off-the-shelf, commercially available ADCs to determine which ones were more resistant to radiation. Rui (Ray) Xu, a Columbia Engineering PhD student who has worked on the project since he was an undergraduate at the University of Texas, said that under conditions like those a chip might experience during a collision at the LHC, the radiation proved to be too intense and the industrial options all “just died.”
“We realized that if we wanted something that worked, we’d have to design it ourselves,” Xu said.
Due to the cost and logistical complications of creating entirely new manufacturing methods from scratch, the Columbia team opted to stay with commercially proven processes that had already been validated by CERN. Next, they designed the layout of their extreme environment chip by using the layout of its internal architecture to minimize radiation damage. The team also supplemented the radiation shielded chip with internal digital systems designed to automatically detect and correct errors in real time
According to the team’s statement, the combination of proven processes and “innovative circuit-level” manufacturing techniques resulted in a one-of-a-kind extreme environment chip capable of withstanding the “unusually severe conditions at LHC” for at least the next ten years.
After recently passing its final tests, the newly designed data acquisition chip will be installed in the LHC during its next upgrade, scheduled to begin in July 2026 and finish sometime around July 2030. Once installed, the team said its ability to precisely digitize collision signals will enable physicists to explore the fabric of reality at previously unattainable scales. Experiments using the extreme chip could include efforts to further explore the enigmatic nature of the elusive Higgs boson and other subatomic particles that comprise the most fundamental aspects of science, utilized by researchers across diverse disciplines.
“The opportunity as an engineer to contribute so directly to fundamental science is what makes this project special,” Xu said.
“These sort(s) of collaborations between physicists and engineers are very important to advancing our ability to explore fundamental questions about the universe,” added John Parsons, professor of physics at Columbia University and leader of the Columbia team working on the ATLAS detector, one of the LHC’s massive instruments.. “Developing state-of-the-art instrumentation is crucial to our success.”
The study “A Radiation-Hard 8-Channel 15-Bit 40-MSPS ADC for the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter Readout” was published in the IEEE Open Journal of the Solid-State Circuits Society.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.