An International Spring School in nuclear engineering was held at the University of California Berkeley (UCB) from March 4th - 8th. It was a cooperative project between UCB and the University of Tokyo. The main organizers were Prof. Hiroyuki Takahashi from the University of Tokyo and Prof. Kai Vetter from UC Berkeley. This time the school focused on the radiation measurements and lectures were held by Dr. Paul Barton from UCB, who gave overview talks and introductions to VHDL for FPGA programming. The practical part was taught by Dr. Valentin Jordanov from Yantel, LLC. Los Alamos, USA. The student delegation consisted of 8 U.S. students from the School of Engineering, UC Berkeley, 7 Japanese students from The University of Tokyo, 2 European students from Uppsala and Technical University of Munich, and 1 U.S. student studying at the University of Tokyo.
Students worked with a FPGA based Multi Channel Analyzer labZY nanoMCA with Dual input 16-bit 80 MHz ADC. A Silicon Drift Detector (SDD) could be directly coupled in the same housing. The used FPGA was an Altera Cyclone IV-G FPGA. The nanoMCA was powered and operated via USB so that all programming could be done on Laptops running Windows 8 and Altera's Quartus 9.1 design software. This version is the last with integrated simulation toolkits to test the coded VHDL logic. Dr. Valentin Jordanov has written his own standalone program to readout the detector signals, create energy spectra, control the registers of the FPGA and monitor the logical signals. By this, the VHDL coded could be immediately tested and verified with real hardware.
Besides the lectures and exercises, all attendants had lab tours at the Berkeley National Labs. Students visited a cyclotron and its control rooms and could see different experiments with electron beams. The cyclotron was invented by Ernest Lawrence and first operated in 1932 for which he received the Nobel Prize. Afterwards we had a tour at the ALS Advanced Light Source to the accelerators, beamlines and different experiments. A US style barbecue with a very nice view over San Francisco Bay concluded the evening.