Nim

For other meanings, see Nim (disambiguation).

The Nuclear Instrumentation Module standard defines mechanical and electrical specifications for electronics modules used in experimental particle and nuclear physics. First defined by the US Atomic Energy Commission's report TID-20893 in 1968-1969, NIM was most recently revised in 1990 (DOE/ER-0457T).

The NIM standard provides a common footprint for electronic modules (amplifiers, ADCs, DACs, discriminators, etc.), which plug into a larger chassis (NIM crate, or NIM bin). The crate must supply ±12 and ±24 Volts DC power to the modules via a backplane; the standard also specifies ±6V DC and 220V or 110V AC pins, but not all NIM bins provide them.

NIM modules cannot communicate with each other through the crate backplane; this a feature of later standards such as CAMAC and VMEbus. As a consequence, NIM based ADC modules are nowdays uncommon in nuclear and particle physics. NIM is still widely used for amplifiers, discriminators and other logic modules which do not require digital data communication and benefit from a backplane connector that is also better suited for high power use and allows live plug-in/plug-out.

The NIM standard also specifies cabling, connectors, impedances and levels for logic signals. The fast logic standard (commonly known as NIM logic) is a current based logic, with negative true; an ECL-based logic is also specified.

References

[AN INTRODUCTION TO NIM]
LeCroy 1985 Catalog
[Ortec] - "NIM and CAMAC Standards for Modular Instrumentation" (PDF)

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Nim

See also

References