Functional irradiation tests of the ATLAS TileCal digitizer using FPGA testbenches

The Atlas Tile calorimeter digitizer board was successfully tested on component and system levels with ionizing neutron and proton irradiation.For the functional tests FPGA test benches were developed to provide realistic run time operation during the tests.Using FPGAs on general purpose boards proved very useful when designing test systems for the TileCal Digitizer system.It made it possible to develop the test system iteratively, gradually learning how the test system and the system under test behave.