DASH: An Ultra-Low-Latency Dual Anti-Spam Sorted-Hit Funneling Circuit for Event Detection Applications

This article describes an implementation for the readout of a digital system capable of sampling a large number of channels, selecting only those that contain useful information, and processing the data with the lowest possible latency. We explore the existing solutions for similar problems and identify the situations in which a system of these characteristics is useful, focusing on event detection electronics in particle physics experiments. To accomplish these goals, in this work, we design, implement, and test an ultra-low-latency high-throughput digital funneling module. This circuit manages the sampling of the input channels where data from the detections (hits) arrive, complements the received information, and funnels it to its output, delivering the hits in the order received. It features two mechanisms for overload management: enforcement of maximum hit processing latency and automatic masking of individual noisy channels. All mentioned features have been proven and characterized in detail through rigorous simulations, area and power consumption analysis, and timing verification.