The GosipGUI Framework for Control and Benchmarking of Readout Electronics Front-Ends

The gigabit optical serial interface protocol (GOSIP) provides communication via optical fibers between multiple kinds of front-end electronics and the KINPEX PCIe receiver board located in the readout host PC. In recent years, a stack of device driver software has been developed to utilize this hardware for several scenarios of data acquisition (DAQ). On top of this driver foundation, several graphical user interfaces (GUIs) have been created. These GUIs are based on the Qt graphics libraries and are designed in a modular way: All common functionalities, like generic I/O with the front-ends, handling of configuration files, and window settings are treated by a framework class GosipGUI. In the Qt workspace of such GosipGUI frame, specific subclasses may implement additional windows dedicated to operating different GOSIP front-end modules. For each kind of front-end, the GUIs allow to monitor specific register contents, set up the working configuration, and interactively change parameters like sampling thresholds during DAQ. The latter is extremely useful when qualifying and tuning the front-ends in the electronics lab or detector cave. Moreover, some of these GosipGUI implementations have been equipped with features for mostly automatic testing of ASICs in a prototype mass production.