FPGA and Software Design for the Qualification and Automated tests for the production of CERN Digital Acquisition Boards

The VFC-HPC is an FPGA-based multipurpose board designed to be the new standard back-end for the Beam Instrumentation (BI) Group. This contribution is aimed to give a presentation of the test and qualification system designed to be used to verify the compliance of the VFC-HPC to the specifications. We will begin by presenting the CERN, the company, its main purpose and its brief history. Afterward, we will present the VFC-HPC, the purpose of this board and its mains characteristics. We will then focus on the work done to allow the test and qualification of the VFC-HPC. This project was focused on the test and qualification of the connectivity of the board, consisting of the FMC Connector and the SFPs. This work involved making several market surveys to choose the proper test components to be used (as FMC Mezzanines), setting up a test bench, implementing optical communications through SFPs, writing Verilog firmwares, writing software test routines in Python and measuring Bit Error Rates (BER) and eye diagrams. Finally, we will conclude this thesis by giving a summary of the work done, the most important results and the future prospects.