The TRB hardware module is a multi-purpose Trigger and Readout Board with on-board DAQ functionality developed for the upgrade of the HADES experiment. It contains a single computer chip (Etrax) running Linux as a well as a 100 Mbit/s Ethernet interface. It has been orginally designed to work as a 128-channel Time to Digital Converter based on the HPTDC chip from CERN. The new version contains a 2 Gbit/s optical link and an interface connector (15 Gbit/s) in order to realize an add-on card concept which makes the hardware very flexible. Moreover, an FPGA chip (Xilinx, Virtex 4 LX 40) and a TigerSharc DSP provide new computing resources which can be used to run on-line analysis algorithms. The TRB is proposed as a prototype for new modules for the planned detector systems PANDA and CBM at the future FAIR facility at GSI-Darmstadt.
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