Study of hardware implementations of fast tracking algorithms

Real-time track reconstruction at high event rates is a major challenge for future experiments in high energy physics. To perform pattern-recognition and track fitting, artificial retina or Hough transformation methods have been introduced in the field which have to be implemented in FPGAfirmware. In this notewe report on a case study of a possible FPGAhardware implementation approach of the retina algorithm based on a Floating-Point core. Detailed measurements with this algorithm are investigated. Retina performance and capabilities of the FPGA are discussed along with perspectives for further optimization and applications.SCOPUS: cp.j