Real time tracking with a silicon telescope prototype using the “artificial retina” algorithm

We present the first prototype of a silicon tracker using the artificial retina algorithm for fast track finding. The algorithm is inspired by the neurobiological mechanism of recognition of edges in mammals visual cortex. It is based on extensive parallelization and is implemented on commercial FPGAs allowing us to reconstruct real time tracks with offline-like quality and <1μs latencies. The practical device consists of a telescope with 8 single-sided silicon strip sensors and custom DAQ boards equipped with Xilinx Kintex 7 FPGAs that perform the readout of the sensors and the track reconstruction in real time.