A digital front-end and readout microsystem for calorimetry at LHC : the FERMI project

A digital solution is presented to the front-end readout electronics for calorimetric detectors at future supercolliders based on high-speed analog-digital converters, a fully programmable pipeline/digital filter chain, and local intelligence. Questions of error correction, fault-tolerance and system redundancy are considered. A system integration of a multichannel device in a multichip, silicon-on-silicon microsystem hybrid is used. This solution allows a new level of integration of complex analog and digital functions with excellent flexibility in mixing technologies for the different functional blocks. This type of VLSI multichip integration allows a high degree of programmability at both the function and the system level, and offers the possibility of customizing the microsystem with detector-specific functions.