FELIX: a PCIe based high-throughput approach for interfacing front-end and trigger electronics in the ATLAS upgrade framework

The ATLAS Phase-I upgrade requires a Trigger and Data Acquisition (TDAQ) system able to trigger and record data from up to three times the nominal LHC instantaneous luminosity. The FELIX system provides this in a scalable, detector agnostic and easily upgradeable way. It is a PC-based gateway, routing between custom radiation tolerant optical links from front-end electronics, via FPGA PCIe Gen3 cards, and a commodity switched Ethernet or InfiniBand network. FELIX enables reducing custom electronics in favor of software on commercial servers. The FELIX system, results of demonstrator, design and testing of prototype are described.