MEGACAM, the next generation wide-field camera for CFHT

MEGACAM is the next generation wide-field camera to be used at the prime focus of the 3.6m CFHT telescope. This instrument, which will cover a full 1 square degree, is designed around a mosaic of 36 to 40 2Kx4K CCDs. Sucha large detector requires new approaches for the hardware as well as the software, and will have major impacts on the telescope structure, optics and operations. We present in this paper several novel ideas and techniques that will be implemented as part of this challenging project.