Modular pipeline readout electronics for the SuperBelle drift chamber

In order to explore new physics in B-meson decays we plan to upgrade the KEK B-factory to a luminosity of 5/spl times/10/sup 35/ cm/sup -2/ s/sup -1/. In parallel we are developing a new pipelined data acquisition system for the Belle detector to cope with higher trigger rates of up to 30 kHz and severe background conditions. In order to reduce development and maintenance costs, we have adopted a modular design for these new readout electronics. The chosen architecture consists of a common readout platform, upon which are mounted subdetector specific parts, customized to meet the readout requirements of each sub detector component. As an example of this new architecture, we present in this paper the design of drift chamber electronics. The drift chamber readout utilizes the AMT-3 time-to-digital converter chip, originally developed for the ATLAS experiment, which satisfies the performance requirement for current and future Belle drift chamber readout. A data transfer performance test with emulation modules, mounted on the common platform, shows that the new readout electronics works well at a more than 30 kHz input trigger rate.