OPERATION AND PERFORMANCE OF AN ATM BASED DEMONSTRATOR FOR THE SEQUENTIAL OPTION OF THE ATLAS TRIGGER

This paper describes an implementation on a small scale demonstrator o f the sequential option for the ATLAS trigger. This demonstrator is bu ilt around an ATM switch connecting source modules, destination proces sors, a supervisor and a monitor. The source modules emulate a group o f detector readout buffers. We describe the hardware and software arch itecture of the system. We investigate the performance of the demonstr ator in various configurations and with different sets of input parame ters. Finally, we discuss the scaling of the results to the design of a large trigger system for ATLAS.