The ATLAS FELIX Project

FELIX is a key component of the new readout architecture for the ATLAS experiment at CERN. It consists of commodity servers hosting PCIe cards, which receive data from detector and trigger electronics over optical links and transfer them to the host system via Direct Memory Access (DMA). From there, a software routing platform serves data to subscribed network peers, as well as routing commands to detector and trigger electronics in the other direction. While in the ATLAS context FELIX is designed to integrate with the ATLAS TDAQ software infrastructure, it has also been used in numerous other experiments and is designed to be flexible.

The FELIX codebase comprises both firmware (gateware) and software components, and is designed and maintained by researchers at institutes who are members of the ATLAS Collaboration.

The codebase is available in open-source form for both firmware and software.