Speaker
Mr
Salvatore Danzeca
(CERN)
Description
The particle accelerators and high energy physics (HEP) experiments require advanced instruments using the latest technology. The complex and new applications require custom instrumentation and need constant research and development of new electronics.
To address the need of customization and high processing capability the Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) are a very popular choice in both the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerator and HEP experiments. The advantage of using FPGA is in their versatility, programmability, high bandwidth communication interfaces and signal processing capabilities.
FPGAs are key elements for several equipment in the LHC accelerator with different degrees of criticality. In the accelerator the most exposed equipment, such as the cryogenic, power converter and beam instrumentation widely use FPGAs. For the HEP experiments, the FPGA starts to become attractive in environments with low/medium radiation and where power/integration issues are less critical.
Being one of the showstoppers, the radiation levels in the LHC accelerator and in the experiments are presented. The custom application requirements for the accelerator and the experiments are discussed with a focus on the lifetime and tolerable error rates. Some typical applications will be presented in order to give an overview of the use of the FPGA in the HEP sector.
Primary author
Mr
Salvatore Danzeca
(CERN)
