Bier&Pastis, a pixel readout prototype chip for LHC

The 12*63 pixel readout prototype chip Bieu&Pastis, designed to cope with the environment imposed on a pixel detector by high-energy proton-proton collisions as expected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is described. The chip contains the full pixel cell functionality, but not yet the full peripheral architecture for data transfer and readout with LHC speed. Design considerations and lab tests to characterize the performance as well as some test beam results are described. (7 refs).