A specialized processor for track reconstruction at the LHC crossing rate

We present the results of an R&D study of a specialized processor capable of precisely reconstructing events with hundreds of charged-particle tracks in pixel detectors at 40 MHz, thus suitable for processing LHC events at the full crossing frequency. For this purpose we design and test a massively parallel pattern-recognition algorithm, inspired by studies of the processing of visual images by the brain as it happens in nature. We find that high-quality tracking in large detectors is possible with sub-μs latencies when this algorithm is implemented in modern, high-speed, high-bandwidth FPGA devices. This opens a possibility of making track reconstruction happen transparently as part of the detector readout.