The MicroTCA fast control board for generic control and data acquisition applications in HEP experiments

Abstract: To provide the generic clock, trigger and control function and fulfill the data transmission performance requirement in high energy physics (HEP) experiments, a MicroTCA Fast Control board (uFC) was developed based on the Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) specification. Built around the Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA, the uFC provides users with a platform with data memory, reference clock, trigger and SFP+ (Small Form-factor Pluggable) connections that are required in general experiment. In addition, it has access to two on-board FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) sockets with a large array of configurable I/O and high-speed links up to 10 Gbps. This paper presents test results from the first set of pre-production prototypes and reports on the application in High Energy Photon Source in China.