Summary

The design of the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker and its electronic readout system has been presented in its specific environment. The n-type silicon detectors will be made of both 4" and 6" wafers with thicknesses of $300$ and $500\,\rm\mu m$, covering a total area of $206\,\rm m^2$ with $10\,\rm million$ channels. The APV25 readout chip is a fast, low-noise, 128-channel charge sensitive amplifier with internal pipeline and deconvolution signal processing. In the front-end it is supported by several ASICs, which take over specific tasks in readout, control and monitoring. These chips include the APVMUX, which multiplexes the output of APV pairs onto a single line, the DCU, which monitors voltages, currents and temperatures, the PLL-Delay for providing clock and trigger signals and adjusting their phases, and the CCU, which handles control and monitoring signals. All CMS front-end chips will be manufactured in the radiation tolerant $0.25\,\rm\mu m$ deep submicron process. The control path between CCU in the front-end and FEC in the control room is connected with a digital optical link, while an analog optical link transmits the APV signals to the FED, where the data are digitized, processed and passed on to the event builder.