Title :
A PCI interface with four 2-gbit/s serial optical links
Author :
Iwanski, Wieslaw ; Haas, Stefan ; Joos, Markus
Author_Institution :
Henryk Niewodniczanski Inst. of Nucl. Phys. Polish Acad. of Sci., Krakow
Abstract :
A reconfigurable PCI interface card (FILAR) with four on-board high-speed serial optical links has been developed for application in DAQ and test systems. FILAR cards, installed in low-cost PCs, are currently being used in the combined test-beam of the ATLAS experiment at CERN, as well as in several laboratory setups. The hardware and firmware design of the module and results from performance measurements are presented. The four on-board 2 Gbit/s serial optical links conform to the S-LINK specification and are compatible with the readout link (ROL) implementation for the ATLAS experiment. The board design is largely based on FPGAs and the firmware uses a commercial 64-bit/66 MHz PCI IP core for the bus interface. Different firmware versions were developed which can be used to configure the hardware as either a data source or a destination card. Design optimizations have been made during the development cycle of the firmware to maximize the data throughput and reduce the PCI bus overhead as well as the CPU load. In a PC with multiple PCI bus segments, an aggregate data throughput of over 1.7 Gbyte/s has been measured and transfer rates of more than 100 kHz for 1 Kbyte data fragments have been achieved
Keywords :
data acquisition; digital communication; field programmable gate arrays; firmware; high energy physics instrumentation computing; optical transmitters; peripheral interfaces; readout electronics; reconfigurable architectures; ATLAS experiment; CERN; CPU load; DAQ; FILAR cards; FPGA; PCI bus segments; S-LINK specification; bus interface; data acquisition; data communication; data fragments; data source; design optimizations; destination card; digital communication; electronic equipment; field programmable gate arrays; firmware design; on-board high-speed serial optical links; optical transmitters; performance measurement; readout link implementation; reconfigurable PCI interface card; test systems; Data acquisition; Field programmable gate arrays; Hardware; Laboratories; Measurement; Microprogramming; Optical fiber communication; Personal communication networks; System testing; Throughput; Computer interfaces; IP core; PCI interface; data acquisition; data communication; digital communication; electronic equipment; field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs); optical transmitters;
Journal_Title :
Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TNS.2005.862792
