  A MHz frame rate X-ray area detector (LPD - Large Pixel Detector) is under
development by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory for the European XFEL. The
detector will have 1 million pixels and allows analogue storage of 512 images
taken at 4.5 MHz in the detector front end. The LPD detector has 500 mm thick
silicon sensor tiles that are bump bonded to a readout ASIC. The ASICs
preamplifier provides relatively low noise at high speed which results in a
high dynamic range of 10^5 photons over an energy range of 5-20 keV. Small
scale prototypes of 32x256 pixels (LPD 2-Tile detector) and 256x256 pixels (LPD
supermodule detector) are now available for X-ray tests. The performance of
prototypes of the detector is reported for first tests under synchrotron
radiation (PETRA III at DESY) and Free-Electron-Laser radiation (LCLS at SLAC).
The initial performance of the detector in terms of signal range and noise,
radiation hardness and spatial and temporal response are reported. The main
result is that the 4.5 MHz sampling detection chain is reliably working,
including the analogue on-chip memory concept. The detector is at least
radiation hard up to 5 MGy at 12 keV. In addition the multiple gain concept has
been demonstrated over a dynamic range to 10^4 at 12 keV with a readout noise
equivalent to <1 photon rms in its most sensitive mode.
