arXiv : Data Acquisition System for the CALICE AHCAL Calorimeter

The data acquisition system (DAQ) for a highly granular analogue hadron calorimeter (AHCAL) for the future International Linear Collider is presented. The developed DAQ chain has several stages of aggregation and scales up to 8 million channels foreseen for the AHCAL detector design. The largest aggregation device, Link Data Aggregator, has 96 HDMI connectors, four Kintex7 FPGAs and a central Zynq System-On-Chip. Architecture and performance results are shown in detail. Experience from DESY testbeams with a small detector prototype consisting of 15 detector layers are shown.