Migration of Belle II TOP Feature Extraction from the Zynq Processing System to PCIe40 Readout PCs

Abstract

The Belle II Time-of-Propagation (TOP) detector is a key system for charged-particle identification (PID). Although TOP operated successfully during initial Belle II data taking, increasing luminosity and beam-induced background led to more frequent single-event upsets (SEUs) in the radiation-exposed Zynq systems-on-chip (SoCs). Resulting lockups of the embedded processing systems (PSs) interrupted data acquisition. To mitigate this limitation, waveform feature extraction, a critical task of the on-detector Zynq PS, was migrated to the off-detector PCIe40 readout PCs (ROPCs). The new architecture bypasses the PS in the event data path and performs feature extraction outside the detector radiation environment. This change removed SEU-induced PS lockups from the event data path and enabled stable operation of the TOP front-end electronics and the Belle II data-acquisition system under increased luminosity and background conditions. The typical TOP deadtime decreased from about 1% to a level consistent with zero after the final firmware patch, and stable operation was demonstrated at a Level-1 (L1) trigger rate of 30 kHz with a microchannel-plate photomultiplier-tube (MCP-PMT) hit rate of approximately 5 MHz per PMT. This paper describes the migrated architecture, its deployment and validation, and its operational and PID performance.