A general purpose Ethernet based readout data acquisition system

A flexible dedicated readout system is one of the most important part of any kind of dedicated detection system, especially for its testing phase as well as when the final system is ready for implementation. An obvious choice is to use a FPGA (apart from dedicated front-end electronics) as a first stage of data storage and processing element. Furthermore the FPGA has to prepare and transfer the incoming/processed data to the host PC. The implementation of the data exchange can be a problem, especially for small groups of developers, who have an option to buy a general solution with its limitations and a price, or to do time-consuming development of their own system practically from scratch. This paper presents a FPGA based general purpose readout solution which lies in between the two opposite approaches.