PCI-Express Based High-Speed Readout for the Belle II DAQ Upgrade

Belle II is a new-generation B-factory experiment, dedicated to exploring new physics beyond the standard model of elementary particles in the flavor sector. Belle II started data-taking in April 2018, using a synchronous data acquisition (DAQ) system based on pipelined trigger flow control. The Belle II DAQ system is designed to handle a 30-kHz trigger rate with approximately 1% of dead time, under the assumption of a raw event size of 1 MB. The DAQ system is reliable, and the overall data-taking efficiency reached 84.2% during the run period of January 2020–June 2020. The current readout system cannot be operated in the terms of ten years from the viewpoint of DAQ maintainability; meanwhile, the readout system is obstructing high-speed data transmission. A solution involving a peripheral component interconnect (PCI)-express-based readout module with high data throughput of up to 100 Gb/s was adopted to upgrade the Belle II DAQ system. We particularly focused on the design of firmware and software based on this new generation of readout board, called PCIe40, with an Altera Arria 10 field-programmable gate array chip. The 48-Gb transceiver (GBT) serial links, PCI-express hard IP-based direct memory access (DMA) architecture, interface of timing and trigger distribution system, and slow control system were designed to integrate with the current Belle II DAQ system. This article describes the performances accomplished during the data readout and slow control tests conducted using a test bench and a demonstration performed using on-site front-end electronics, specifically involving Belle II TOP and KLM subdetectors.