Electronics Developments for High Speed Data Throughput and Processing

The European XFEL DAQ system has to acquire and process data in short bursts every 100ms. Bursts lasts for 600us and contain a maximum of 2700 x-ray pulses with a repetition rate of 4.5MHz which have to be captured and processed before the next burst starts. This time structure defines the boundary conditions for almost all diagnostic and detector related DAQ electronics required and currently being developed for start of operation in fall 2015. Standards used in the electronics developments are: MicroTCA.4 and AdvancedTCA crates, use of FPGAs for data processing, transfer to backend systems via 10Gbps (SFP+) links, and feedback information transfer using 3.125Gbps (SFP) links. Electronics being developed in-house or in collaboration with external institutes and companies include: a Train Builder ATCA blade for assembling and processing data of large-area image detectors, a VETO MTCA.4 development for evaluating pulse information and distributing a trigger decision to detector front-end ASICs and FPGAs with low-latency, a MTCA.4 digitizer module, interface boards for timing and similar synchronization information, etc