Speaker
Francesco Crescioli
(Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR))
Description
The Fast TracKer (FTK) trigger project is an upcoming upgrade for the
ATLAS trigger system currently under installation. A first reduced-coverage FTK
is expected to participate in data taking by the end of 2015, while full detector coverage will be
reached in 2016 and more processing power will be added in 2017-2018.
The ATLAS FTK is a dedicated supercomputing processor based on FPGAs and a
custom ASIC: the Associative Memory chip (AMchip). The AMchip is the core
processor in charge of the real-time pattern recognition stage of the FTK
algorithm. It is based on Content Addressable Memory elements connected by
advanced computation logic that adds the unique feature to look for correlated hits forming tracks.
The AMchip05 is the latest AMchip prototype before the final FTK production. It
is functionally identical to the upcoming production chip with the only difference
of pattern capacity. We will show the AMchip05 architecture, the design,
implementation and the in-depth performance analysis under different working
conditions (power supply voltage and operating frequency). We will discuss the
impact on physics performance enabled by the new features with respect to
the previous AMchip generation, in particular the possibility to have variable
resolution patterns. We will also address the impact on LHC Phase-2 tracking
applications of the current chip and the foreseen developments.
Primary author
ATLAS TDAQ Speakers Committee
(ATLAS)
