Back-End Readout Electronics for Hyper Suprime-Cam

We have developed back-end electronics (BEE) for Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), the next generation of wide-field cameras to be mounted on the 8.2-meter diameter Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. HSC employs 116 pieces of 2 k x 4 k charge coupled devices to cover a 1.5-degree-diameter field of view. The BEE is the digital part of the readout electronics that bridges the analog front end and the data acquisition computers. The BEE is required to read out 2.3-GB imaging data within 10 s without being a major source of readout noise; to fit within the three blocks of the 7-slot 3U Euro-card system; and to have a power consumption too low to affect the light path. Our BEE was designed to achieve all of these requirements, and measurements of its performance showed that all of these requirements were satisfied. Hence we concluded that the BEE we designed is sufficient for HSC.