ROCK: the readout controller for the KLOE experiment

A read-out controller (ROCK) has been developed for the data acquisition system of the KLOE High Energy Physics experiment, based in Frascati, Italy. The ROCK performs data acquisition in an event-driven fashion on the AUXbus, a custom high speed parallel bus. The AUXbus´s main features are data cycles labeled by event number, sparse data scan operations and an asynchronous protocol optimized to achieve data rates up to 15 MHz. On a standard VMEbus, the ROCK allows for data snooping and real-time performance monitoring, without additional overhead on data acquisition. ROCK boards can be linked together via a custom cable bus (Cbus) to build a complex DAQ subsystem. The ROCK board has been designed around three 4.2 K gate XILINX FPGAs. Dual port FIFO banks are used to decouple the asynchronous buses. A preliminary version of the board is presented and test results are briefly discussed