The CDF Silicon Vertex Tracker

Real time pattern recognition is becoming a key issue in many position sensitive detector applications. The CDF collaboration is building SVT: a specialized electronic device designed to perform real time track reconstruction using the silicon vertex detector (SVX II). This will strongly improve the CDF capability of triggering on events containing b quarks, usually characterized by the presence of a secondary vertex. SVT is designed to reconstruct in real time charged particles trajectories using data coming from the Silicon VerteX detector and the Central Outer Tracker drift chamber. The SVT architecture and algorithm have been specially tuned to minimize processing time without degrading parameter resolution.