Laboratory, optical and precision equipments (excl. glasses)

Tender description

Background: Xilinx Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) These electronic devices are requested for the ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger Upgrade project. This particle physics project has been given the highest priority rating in UK planning (Alpha–5). This project is a collaboration between Birmingham, Cambridge, QMUL and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The project is to upgrade the data selection system for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. This requires the design and construction of custom electronics. Field-Programmable Gate Arrays are an essential part of such electronics, providing flexible processing power with a minimum latency, unmatched by any other technology, and provide the only viable solution for this task. Xilinx Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are requested for the ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger Upgrade project. This particle physics project has been given the highest priority rating in UK planning (Alpha–5). This project is a collaboration between Birmingham, Cambridge, QMUL and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The project is to upgrade the data selection system for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. This requires the design and construction of custom electronics. Field-Programmable Gate Arrays are an essential part of such electronics, providing flexible processing power with a minimum latency, unmatched by any other technology, and provide the only viable solution for this task. Extensive research, design studies and prototyping over the last 5 years have identified the specific devices requested here as those that best meet our requirements. These Xilinx Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) as supplied by Avnet EMG Ltd offer market-leading input/output capacity, which is an essential feature of the system. The design of the circuit boards and the two rounds of prototyping have therefore been based on these devices. There are no compatible devices available from other manufacturers, and adoption of devices from the another manufacturer would require a significant re-design of the proposed system and new rounds of prototyping, in addition to extensive staff re-training, with corresponding increases to schedule and cost. As the equipment must be installed at CERN in 2019 there is in practice no alternative possible. FPGAs will form the core of the upgraded ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger.Given the schedule of the upgrade project it is essential that we manufacture the final equipment this year, if the UK is to meet its commitment to CERN. A purchase of FPGAs is therefore required.