SIDECAR ASIC firmware for astronomy applications

The SIDECAR ASIC is a fully integrated system-on-a-chip focal plane array controller that offers low power and low noise, small size and low weight. It has been widely used to operate different image sensors for ground-based and flightbased astronomy applications. A key mechanism to operating analog detectors is the SIDECAR ASIC's high level of programmability. This paper gives an overview of the SIDECAR ASIC architecture, including its optimized microcontroller featuring a customized instruction set. It describes the firmware components, including timing generation, biasing, commanding, housekeeping and synchronization of multiple detectors. The firmware development tools including compiler and supporting development environment and hardware setup are presented. The firmware capability for ground-based HxRG applications and for flight-based applications like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the repair of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and others are also discussed.