TELL1: development of a common readout board for LHCb

LHCb is one of the four experiments currently under construction at LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at CERN, and its aim is the study of b-quark physics (LHCb Collaboration, CERN-LHCC/98-4). LHCb trigger strategy is based on three levels, and will reduce the event rate from 40 MHz to a few hundred Hz (LHCb Collaboration, CERN/LHCC 2003-031, LHCb TDR 10, September 2003). The first two levels (L0 and L1) will use signals from some part of the detector in order to take fast decisions, while the last one, called High Level Trigger (HLT), will have access to the full event data. An 'off detector' readout board (TELL1) has been developed and will be used by the majority of LHCb subdetectors. It takes L0 accepted data as input and, after data processing which includes event synchronization, L1 Trigger pre-processing and zero suppression, L1 buffering, and HLT zero suppression, the output is sent to L1 Trigger and HLT