The Associative Memory Boards for the FTK Processor at ATLAS

The Associative Memory (AM) system, the main part of the FastTracker (FTK) processor, is designed to perform pattern matching using the information of the silicon tracking detectors of the ATLAS experiment. It finds track candidates at low resolution that are seeds for the following step performing precise track fitting. The system has to support challenging data traffic, handled by a group of modern low-cost FPGAs, the Xilinx Artix 7 chips, which have Low-Power Gigabit Transceivers (GTPs). Each GTP is a combined transmitter and receiver capable of operating at data rates up to 7 Gb/s. The paper reports about the design and the initial tests of the most recent version of the AM system, based on the new AM chip design provided of serialized I/O. An estimation of the power consumption of the final system is also provided and the cooling system design is described. The first cooling tests results are reported.