FELIX: The New Readout System for the ATLAS Detector

A Trigger and Data Acquisition system (TDAQ) capable to trigger and record data is required by the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Given the increase in luminosity after the Phase1 and Phase2 shutdowns (2018-2019, 2024-2026) of the La\ rge Hadron Collider (LHC), the TDAQ system will need to be upgraded. The Front-End LInk eXchange system (FELIX) provides the right infrastructure to cope with the increase in luminosity. FELIX, a commercial server plus PCIe card\ s, will be scalable, detector agnostic, and easily upgradeable. FELIX interfaces custom optical and radiation tolerant links from front-end electronics to a commodity switched Ethernet or InfiniBand network. FELIX allows replaci\ ng custom electronics in favor of software running on commercial servers. This paper will introduce the FELIX system, will describe the firmware and software under development, and will show the integration test results prior th\ e commissioning of next year.