A new approach to front-end electronics interfacing in the ATLAS experiment

Large liquid argon (LAr) time projection chambers (TPCs) have been adopted for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) experiment's far detector, which will be composed of four 17-kton detectors situated 1.5 km underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. This represents a large increase in scale compared to existing experiments. Both single-and dual-phase technologies will be validated at CERN, in cryostats capable of accommodating full-size detector modules, and exposed to low-energy charged particle beams. This program, called ProtoDUNE, also allows for extensive tests of data acquisition strategies. The Front-End LInk eXchange (FELIX) readout system was initially developed within the ATLAS collaboration and is based on custom field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based Peripheral Component Interconnect Express input/output cards, connected through point-to-point links to the detector front end and hosted in commodity servers. FELIX will be used in the single-phase ProtoDUNE setup to read the data coming from 2560 anode wires organized in a single anode plane assembly (APS) structure. With a continuous readout at a sampling rate of 2 MHz, the system must deal with an input rate of 96 Gb/s. An external trigger will preselect time windows of 5 ms with interesting activity expected inside the detector. Event building will occur for triggered events, at a target rate of 25 Hz; the readout system will form fragments from the data samples matching the time window, carry out lossless compression, and forward the data to event building nodes over 10-Gb/s Ethernet. This paper discusses the design and implementation of this readout system as well as the first operational experience.

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“…The FELIX firmware design has been described in [13] and a simplified version is shown schematically in Fig. 5.…”

Section: Felix Firmwarementioning

confidence: 99%

FELIX-Based Readout of the Single-Phase ProtoDUNE Detector

Borga

Church

Filthaut

et al. 2019

IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.

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“…In the Phase-I configuration, the RGTM card has to be removed, to insert the TREX, and the data collecting and data formatting tasks will be re-located from the ReM FPGA to the PREDATOR FPGA. The transfer of event data from TREX to DAQ will be then realised via one optical link running at 9.6 Gbps and a Front-End Link Exchange (FELIX) device [5]. The TREX will also interface to FELIX to transfer local slow-control data to DCS, and to receive protocol signals from the TTC and specific commands from DCS.…”

Section: Functionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Tile Rear Extension module for the Phase-I upgrade of the ATLAS L1Calo PreProcessor system

et al. 2017

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Tile calorimeter will have to provide its data via fast optical links to the new Feature Extractor (FEX) modules of the L1Calo trigger system. In order to provide the FEXes with digitised Tile data, new Tile Rear Extension (TREX) modules need to be developed and installed in the existing L1Calo PreProcessor system. The TREX modules are highly complex PCBs, with state-of-the-art FPGAs and high-speed optical transmitters working at rates up to 14 Gbps. The prototype design of TREX and first corresponding test results will be presented. K: Digital signal processing (DSP); Modular electronics; Trigger algorithms; Trigger concepts and systems (hardware and software) 1Corresponding author.

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“…As one of the four major experiments, the ATLAS experiment will also follow the same upgrade steps [1]. The Front End LInk eXchange (FELIX) is a new detector readout component being developed as part of the ATLAS upgrade effort [2]. FELIX is designed to act as a data router, receiving packets from detector frontend electronics and sending them to programmable peers on a commodity high bandwidth network.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

FELIX: the New Detector Interface for the ATLAS Experiment

2019

IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.

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During the next major shutdown (2019)(2020), the ATLAS experiment at the LHC will adopt the Front-End Link eXchange (FELIX) system as the interface between the data acquisition, detector control and TTC (Timing, Trigger and Control) systems and new or updated trigger and detector front-end electronics. FELIX will function as a router between custom serial links from front-end ASICs and FPGAs to data collection and processing components via a commodity switched network. Links may aggregate many slower links or be a single high bandwidth link. FELIX will also forward the LHC bunchcrossing clock, fixed latency trigger accepts and resets received from the TTC system to front-end electronics. The FELIX system uses commodity server technology in combination with FPGAbased PCIe I/O cards. The FELIX servers will run a software routing platform serving data to network clients. Commodity servers connected to FELIX systems via the same network will run the new Software Readout Driver (SW ROD) infrastructure for event fragment building and buffering, with support for detector or trigger specific data processing, and will serve the data upon request to the ATLAS High Level Trigger for Event Building and Selection. This paper will cover the design and status of FELIX, the SW ROD, results of early performance testing and integration tests with several ATLAS front-ends.

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A new approach to front-end electronics interfacing in the ATLAS experiment

Cited by 13 publications

References 2 publications

FELIX-Based Readout of the Single-Phase ProtoDUNE Detector

FELIX-Based Readout of the Single-Phase ProtoDUNE Detector

Tile Rear Extension module for the Phase-I upgrade of the ATLAS L1Calo PreProcessor system

FELIX: the New Detector Interface for the ATLAS Experiment

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