Conclusions from first Back-end Front-end integration excercise

The following is the outcome of the first Back-end Front-end integration exercise:

• The communication between Daughterboard (front-end) and the Super Read-out Driver, sROD, emulator (front-end) has been successfully tested.
• Achieved upstream and downstream flow.
• Two different platforms were used as sROD emulator: Xilinx Virtex 7 and Xilinx Kintex 7. Obtained satisfactory results with both evaluation boards.
• An overnight test has been performed to spot potential transmission errors. No error was identified after 14 hours. 

Tests have been performed between an external PC and the readout chain using an IP bus:

• An IP bus interface has been integrated in the design of the sROD emulator.
• This facilitates easy access to hardware registers in the sROD emulator over ethernet. 
• Different communication tests have been performed successfully using the IP bus interface, allowing to use the external PC to read and write registers in the sROD emulator. 

Tests communication between the Daughterboard and the Mainboard:

• Commands and data words have been transmitted from the sROD emulator to the daughterboard using the IPbus interface.
• The Daughterboard processes and transmits the commands and data to the Mainboard.
• This test was not completely successful. The daughterboard reacted to the commands received over IPbus, but not in the expected way.
• Bug probably in the state machine that decodes the command into specific actions for the Mainboard. 

Next integration session will take place in December at CERN.

To the right, Pablo Moreno, from Wits.