The BELLE silicon vertex detector

The silicon vertex detector of the BELLE experiment has been built to provide the vertex information of B meson decays at the KEKB accelerator. It consists of three cylindrical layers of double sided, double metal silicon sensors read out by VA1 chips. The analog signals are transmitted to a system of fast analog-to-digital converters and are reduced on a system based on Motorola Digital Signal Processors. Performance during the initial data taking period and a brief description of the upgrade plan are also presented.