Common Readout System in ALICE

The ALICE experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider is going for a major physics upgrade in 2018. This upgrade is necessary for getting high statistics and high precision measurement for probing into rare physics channels needed to understand the dynamics of the condensed phase of QCD. The high interaction rate and the large event size in the upgraded detectors will result in an experimental data flow traffic of about 1 TB/s from the detectors to the on-line computing system. A dedicated Common Readout Unit (CRU) is proposed for data concentration, multiplexing, and trigger distribution. CRU, as common interface unit, handles timing, data and control signals between on-detector systems and online-offline computing system. An overview of the CRU architecture is presented in this manuscript.