Towards a generic Katherine readout platform for Timepix detectors — plug-in based SW architecture

Abstract This paper presents a modular and configurable software architecture for the Katherine family of readouts used with the Timepix detectors. The new architecture introduces a flexible component model in which hardware-specific implementations can be dynamically selected at runtime through configuration files. The architecture also supports custom on-board processing plugins, implemented either as shared libraries or via inter-process communication. A C++ library was created to support and simplify plugin development. The architecture was implemented and tested on Katherine Gen2 (based on Cyclone V FPGA) with a Timepix3 detector, and on Katherine for Timepix4 (based on Arria 10 FPGA) with a Timepix4 detector. Plugin functionality was demonstrated on a shared library plugin that performs noise filtering and accumulates received pixel hits. This plugin also implements a custom communication channel to transfer the output to a host system that is independent of the control application. Future work will focus on extending the plugin framework and providing ready-to-use processing modules for end users.