The TOTEM Front End Driver or TOTFED receives and handles tracking data and trigger building from the TOTEM detectors, and interfaces to the global trigger and data acquisition systems. vbvbvbv

The TOTFED is based on the VME64x standard and has deliberately been kept modular, very flexible and programmable to deal with the different TOTEM sub-detectors and possible evolution of the data treatment and trigger algorithms over the duration of the experiment.

The main objectives for each unit are to acquire on-detector data from up to 36 optical links, to perform fast data treatment (data reduction, consistency checking, etc...), to transfer to the next level of the system, and to store data on request for slow spy readout via VME64x or USB2.0.

The TOTFED is fully compatible with CMS and permits TOTEM to run both standalone and together with CMS.

The TOTEM Front End Driver, its components and applications in the TOTEM experiment are presented here.