FERMI - A new generation of electronic modules for large data acquisition arrays required for high energy physics

The Front End Readout MIcrosystem, FERMI, is a representative of a new generation of data acquisition modules, which utilizes modern design techniques to achieve a high acquisition rate together with intelligent on-line data processing. FERMI is being designed to satisfy the extreme requirements set by calorimeters in the next generation of particle physics detectors. Such detectors are being designed for the future LHC and SSC accelerators at CERN in Switzerland and at the SSC-laboratory in Texas. The calorimeters demand frequent (67 MHz for LHC, 63.5 MHz for SSC) high precision sampling of a large number of input channels (about 5.105). Each FERMI module serves 9 channels from which samples are AD-converted, corrected and temporarily stored in a local memory. The data are also merged into a trigger sum processed by digital filters to recover time of incidence and amplitude of incoming pulses. Such data is then fed to a first-level trigger processor, which screens irrelevant information. Only data that may contain interesting information, is kept for further analysis. Arrays of 50000 FERMIs constitute formidable processing systems when considering the total computational power and storage capacity.