Versatile firmware for the Common Readout Unit (CRU) of the ALICE experiment at the LHC
O. Bourrion, J. Bouvier, Filippo Costa, E. Dávid, J. Imrek, T. M. Nguyen, Sanjoy Mukherjee
Abstract
Abstract As from the run 3 of CERN LHC scheduled in 2022, the upgraded ALICE experiment will use a Common Readout Unit (CRU) at the heart of the data acquisition system. The CRU, based on the PCIe40 hardware designed for LHCb, is a common interface between 3 main sub-systems: the front-end, the computing system, and the trigger and timing system. The 475 CRUs will interface 10 different sub-detectors and reduce the total data throughput from 3.5 TB/s to 635 GB/s. The ALICE common firmware framework supports data taking in continuous and triggered mode and forwards clock, trigger and slow control to the front-end electronics. In this paper, the architecture and the data-flow performance are presented.