The Apollo ATCA Design for the CMS Track Finder and the Pixel Readout at the HL-LHC

TL;DR

This paper details the design and testing of the Apollo ATCA platform tailored for CMS's track finder and pixel readout at the HL-LHC, focusing on hardware performance under high data rates.

Contribution

It introduces a specialized Apollo platform with high-speed optical links and large FPGAs, optimized for CMS's trigger and data acquisition needs at the HL-LHC.

Findings

Successful power and heat management demonstrated

High optical link integrity confirmed at 25 Gb/s

Design updates improve performance and reliability

Abstract

The challenging conditions of the High-Luminosity LHC require tailored hardware designs for the trigger and data acquisition systems. The Apollo platform features a "Service Module" with a powerful system-on-module computer that provides standard ATCA communications and application-specific "Command Module"s with large FPGAs and high-speed optical fiber links. The CMS version of Apollo will be used for the track finder and the pixel readout. It features up to two large FPGAs and more than 100 optical links with speeds up to 25\,Gb/s. We study carefully the design and performance of the board by using customized firmware to test power consumption, heat dissipation, and optical link integrity. This paper presents the results of these performance tests, design updates, and future plans.