Der ATLAS LVL2-Trigger mit FPGA-Prozessoren : Entwicklung, Aufbau und Funktionsnachweis des hybriden FPGA/CPU-basierten Prozessorsystems ATLANTIS

This thesis describes the conception and implementation of the hybrid FPGA/CPU based processing system ATLANTIS as trigger processor for the proposed ATLAS experiment at CERN. CompactPCI provides the close coupling of a multi FPGA system and a standard CPU. The system is scalable in computing power and flexible in use due to its partitioning into dedicated FPGA boards for computation, I/O tasks and a private communication. Main focus of the research activities based on the usage of the ATLANTIS system are two areas in the second level trigger (LVL2). First, the acceleration of time critical B physics trigger algorithms is the major aim. The execution of the full scan TRT algorithm on ATLANTIS, which has been used as a demonstrator, results in a speedup of 5.6 compared to a standard CPU. Next, the ATLANTIS system is used as a hardware platform for research work in conjunction with the ATLAS readout systems. For further studies a permanent installation of the ATLANTIS system in the LVL2 application testbed is forseen. The versatility of the system appears in the various applications which are planned or already implemented: These are trigger applications in the field of heavy ions physics experiments at the GSI/Darmstadt, 2D/3D image processing appplications and n-body simulation in astrophysics. Application development for ATLANTIS can be done either by using the standardised hardware description language VHDL. And it is alternatively supported by CHDL, a programming system developed at Mannheim. The ATLANTIS operating system supplements the software tools.