Design of a "Digital Atlas Vme Electronics" (DAVE) Module

TL;DR

The paper introduces DAVE, a versatile FPGA-based module designed for ATLAS trigger systems, capable of replicating trigger conditions and offering extensive customization for experimental physics applications.

Contribution

It presents the design and capabilities of DAVE, a new trigger card with extensive interface options and programmable resources for ATLAS experiments.

Findings

DAVE replicates ATLAS CTP functionality accurately.

Provides extensive programmable I/O and large external memory.

Offers hardware and firmware flexibility for user customization.

Abstract

ATLAS-SCT has developed a new ATLAS trigger card, 'Digital Atlas Vme Electronics' ("DAVE"). The unit is designed to provide a versatile array of interface and logic resources, including a large FPGA. It interfaces to both VME bus and USB hosts. DAVE aims to provide exact ATLAS CTP (ATLAS Central Trigger Processor) functionality, with random trigger, simple and complex deadtime, ECR (Event Counter Reset), BCR (Bunch Counter Reset) etc. being generated to give exactly the same conditions in standalone running as experienced in combined runs. DAVE provides additional hardware and a large amount of free firmware resource to allow users to add or change functionality. The combination of the large number of individually programmable inputs and outputs in various formats, with very large external RAM and other components all connected to the FPGA, also makes DAVE a powerful and versatile FPGA utility card