Continuous Integration for the Software and the Firmware of the New ATLAS Muon-Central- Trigger-Processor Interface (MUCTPI)

The new Muon-Central-Trigger-Processor Interface (MUCTPI) is part of the Phase-I upgrade of the ATLAS Level-1 trigger system for Run 3 of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The new MUCTPI has three high-end field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and one system-on-chip (SoC). The FPGAs receive and process muon candidate information arriving on 208 high-speed optical serial links. Processed trigger information and summary data are sent to other parts of the trigger and the data acquisition. The SoC controls, configures, and monitors the hardware and the operation of the MUCTPI. The FPGA part of the SoC provides communication with the processing FPGAs, while the processor system runs software for communication with the run control system of the ATLAS experiment. All software necessary to run the MUCTPI, including the operating system and run control software is being built using continuous integration (CI). CentOS Linux, cross-compilation, and the existing framework for building the ATLAS trigger and data acquisition (TDAQ) software are being used in order to deploy the TDAQ software directly on the SoC. After the successful use of CI of the software, the firmware is also built using that scheme. This article describes the advantages of the use of CI, our experience, as well as the difficulties that needed to be overcome.