Verification of Readout Electronics in the ATLAS ITk Strips Detector

TL;DR

This paper discusses the use of cocotb, an open source verification framework, for testing complex FPGA and ASIC readout electronics in the ATLAS ITk Strips detector, enabling early detection of design issues.

Contribution

It demonstrates the successful application of cocotb for high-level verification of custom ASICs in a high-energy physics detector environment.

Findings

Early detection of design issues in ASIC development

Effective high-level simulation of data flow

Improved reliability of readout electronics verification

Abstract

Particle physics detectors increasingly make use of custom FPGA firmware and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for data readout and triggering. As these designs become more complex, it is important to ensure that they are simulated under realistic operating conditions before beginning fabrication. One tool to assist with the development of such designs is cocotb, an open source digital logic verification framework. Using cocotb, verification can be done at high level using the Python programming language, allowing sophisticated data flow simulations to be conducted and issues to be identified early in the design phase. Cocotb was used successfully in the development of a testbench for several custom ASICs for the ATLAS ITk Strips detector, which found and resolved many problems during the development of the chips.