General programmable Level-1 trigger with 3D-Flow assembly system for calorimeters of different sizes and event rates.

摘要

Experience demonstrates that fine tuning on the trigger of an experiment is often achieved only after running the experiment and analyzing the first data acquired. It is desirable that identification and, consequently, selection of interesting events be made on a more refined identification of particles. Use of an innovative parallel-processing system architecture together with an instruction set allows identification of objects (particles) among the data coming from a calorimeter in a programmable manner, utilizing the information related to their shape in two- or three-dimensional form, rather than applying only a programmable threshold proportional to their energy. The architecture is flexible, allowing execution of simple algorithms as well as complex pattern recognition algorithms. It is scalable in the sense that the same hardware can be used for small or large calorimeters having a slow or fast event rate. The simple printed circuit board (accommodating 16 (times) 3D-Flow processors) on a 4 in. (times) 4 in. board described herein uses the same hardware to build a large Level-1 programmable trigger (by interconnecting many boards in a matrix array) and is capable of implementing simple or complex pattern recognition algorithms at different event input rates (by cascading boards one on top of another). With the same hardware one can build low-cost, programmable Level-1 triggers for a small and low-event-rate calorimeter, or high-performance, programmable Level-1 triggers for a large calorimeter capable of sustaining up to 60 million events per second.