FERMI-a new generation of electronic modules for large data acquisition arrays required by high energy physics

The FERMI, Front End Readout MIcrosystem, is representative for a new generation of data acquisition modules which utilizes modern design techniques to achieve high acquisition rates together with intelligent on-line data processing. FERMI is being designed to satisfy the extreme requirements set by calorimeters in the next generation of particle physics detectors. Such detectors are currently being designed for the future LHC accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. The calorimeters demand frequent (40 MHz or 80 MHz, if sampled between bunch crossings) high precision sampling of a large number of input channels (about 5.10⁵ ). Each FERMI module serves 9 channels from which samples are AD-converted, corrected and temporarily stored in a local memory. The data is also merged into a trigger sum, which is processed by digital filters to determine the arrival time and amplitude of incoming pulses. Such data is then fed to a first-level trigger processor which screens irrelevant information. Only data that may contain useful information is kept for further analysis. Arrays of 50000 FERMIs constitute a formidable processing system when considering its total computational power and storage capacity