Chapeland, S
Altini, V
Carena, F
Carena, W
Chibante Barroso, V
Costa, F
Divia, R
Fuchs, U
Makhlyueva, I
Roukoutakis, F
Schossmaier, K
Soos, C
Vande Vyvre, P
von Haller, B
Online processing in the ALICE DAQ The detector algorithms
J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.
022004
219
ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is the heavy-ion detector designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter and the quark-gluon plasma at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Some specific calibration tasks are performed regularly for each of the 18 ALICE sub-detectors in order to achieve most accurate physics measurements. These procedures involve events analysis in a wide range of experimental conditions, implicating various trigger types, data throughputs, electronics settings, and algorithms, both during short sub-detector standalone runs and long global physics runs. A framework was designed to collect statistics and compute some of the calibration parameters directly online, using resources of the Data Acquisition System (DAQ), and benefiting from its inherent parallel architecture to process events. This system has been used at the experimental area for one year, and includes more than 30 calibration routines in production. This paper describes the framework architecture and the synchronization mechanisms involved at the level of the Experiment Control System (ECS) of ALICE. The software libraries interfacing detector algorithms (DA) to the online data flow, configuration database, experiment logbook, and offline system are reviewed. The test protocols followed to integrate and validate each sub-detector component are also discussed, including the automatic build system and validation procedures used to ensure a smooth deployment. The offline post-processing and archiving of the DA results is covered in a separate paper.
eng
2010
Imported from Invenio.
Carena, F
Carena, W
Chapel, S
Divià, R
Fuchs, U
Makhlyueva, I
Schossmaier, K
Soós, C
Vyvre, P V
The ALICE DAQ Online transient data storage system
J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.
022016
119
ALICE is a dedicated heavy-ion detector to exploit the physics potential of nucleus-nucleus (lead-lead) interactions at LHC energies. Running in heavy-ion mode the data rate from event building to permanent storage is expected to be around 1.25 GB/s. To continue data recording even in the event of hardware failure or connection problems, a large disk pool has been installed at the experiment's site as buffering layer between the DAQ and the remote (~5km) tape facility in the CERN Computing Centre. This Transient Data Storage (TDS) disk pool has to provide the bandwidth to be able to simultaneously absorb data from the event building machines and to move data to the tape facility. The aggregated bandwidth of the TDS is expected to exceed 3 GB/s in mixed I/O traffic. Extensive tests have been carried out on various hardware and software solutions with the goal to build a common file space shared by ~60 clients, whilst still providing maximum bandwidth per client (~400MB/s, 4Gbps Fibre Channel), fail-over safety and redundancy. This paper will present the chosen hardware and software solution, the configuration of the TDS pool and the various modes of operation in the ALICE DAQ framework. It will also present the results of the performance tests carried out during the last ALICE Data Challenge.
eng
2008
Imported from Invenio.
Anticic, T
Barroso, V
Carena, F
Carena, W
Chapeland, S
Cobanoglu, O
Dénes, E
Divià, R
Fuchs, U
Kiss, T
Makhlyueva, I
Ozok, F
Roukoutakis, F
Schossmaier, K
Soós, C
Vyvre, P V
Vergara, S
Commissioning of the ALICE data acquisition system
J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.
022006
119
ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is the heavy-ion detector designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter and the quark-gluon plasma at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A flexible, large bandwidth Data Acquisition System (DAQ) has been designed and deployed to collect sufficient statistics in the short running time foreseen per year for heavy ions and to accommodate very different requirements originated from the 18 sub-detectors. The Data Acquisition and Test Environment (DATE) is the software framework handling the data from the detector electronics up to the mass storage. This paper reviews the DAQ software and hardware architecture, including the latest features of the final design, such as the handling of the numerous calibration procedures in a common framework. We also discuss the large scale tests conducted on the real hardware to assess the standalone DAQ performances, its interfaces with the other online systems and the extensive commissioning performed in order to be ready for cosmics data taking scheduled to start in November 2007. The test protocols followed to integrate and validate each sub-detector with DAQ and Trigger hardware synchronized by the Experiment Control System are described. Finally, we give an overview of the experiment logbook, and some operational aspects of the deployment of our computing facilities. The implementation of a Transient Data Storage able to cope with the 1.25 GB/s recorded by the event-building machines and the data quality monitoring framework are covered in separate papers.
eng
2008
Imported from Invenio.
Carena, F
Carena, W
Chapeland, S
Divià, R
Fuchs, U
Makhlyueva, I
Marin, J C
Schossmaier, K
Soos, C
Van de Vyvre, P
Vascotto, A
Anticic, T
Boskovic, Ruder
Cobanoglu, O
Dénes, E
Ozok, F
Vergara, S
Architecture and Implementation of the ALICE Data-Acquisition System
http://cds.cern.ch/record/960457/files/ALICE-INT-2005-015v.2.2.pdf;
Imported from Invenio.
Anticic, T
Di Marzo Serugendo G
Vande Vyvre P
Villalobos Baillie O
Jovanovic P
Specification and Simulation of the ALICE Trigger and DAQ System
The Detector Data Link (DDL) is the high-speed optical link for the ALICE experiment. This link shall transfer the data coming from the detectors at 100 MB/s rate. The main components of the link have been developed: the destination Interface Unit (DIU), the Source Interface Unit (SIU) and the Read-out Receiver Card (RORC). The first RORC version is based on the VME bus. The performance tests show that the maximum VME bandwidth could be reached. Meanwhile the PCI bus became very popular and is used in many platforms. The development of a PCI-based version has been started. The document describes the prototype version in three sections. An overview explains the main purpose of the card: to provide an interface between the DDL and the PCI bus. Acting as a 32bit/33MHz PCI master the card is able to write or read directly to or from the system memory from or to the DDL, respectively. Beside these functions the card can also be used as an autonomous data generator. The card has been designed to be well adapted to applications, which require small software overhead such the high-speed data acquisition systems. The implementation of the firmware will be presented. For the logic design we are using VHDL and schematic draw. Software library routines were written in C and are available on Linux OS. The results of performance measurements will be available to allow the comparison between the VME-RORC and PCI-RORC. In the conclusion the future plans and the idea of the improved (64bit/66MHz) PCI-RORC will be shown.
eng
2001
http://documents.cern.ch/cgi-bin/setlink?base=preprint&categ=cern&id=ali-2001-047;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/523295/files/ali-2001-047.pdf;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/523295/files/ali-2001-047.ps.gz;
Imported from Invenio.
Vande Vyvre, P
Physics Requirements for the ALICE DAQ system
<HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft Word 97"> <TITLE>Abstract</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <B><FONT SIZE=4><P>Abstract</P> </B></FONT> <P>The goal of this note is to review the requirements for the DAQ system originated from the various physics topics that will be studied by the ALICE experiment. It summarises all the current requirements both for Pb-Pb and p-p interactions. The consequences in terms of throughput at different stages of the DAQ system are presented for different running scenarios.</P></BODY> </HTML>
eng
2000
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689321/files/INT-2000-30.pdf;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689321/files/INT-2000-30.ps;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689321/files/INT-2000-30.ps.gz;
Imported from Invenio.
Macowicz, M
ALICE Data Acquisition System Control: Assessment of methods and tools for the development
The purpose of the note is to assess the methods and tools to be used in the development of the ALICE DAQ System Control (ALICE-DSC) and to present the current status of the ALICE-DSC prototype. We first introduce the ALICE-DSC, then we define the criteria for assessing methods and tools to use during the ALICE-DSC development. In the following part of the note we overview reactive programming languages and CASE tools with respect to these criteria, then we present the design of the ALICE-DSC using ObjecTime: the CASE tool we have chosen. In conclusion, we outline the strengths and weaknesses of ObjecTime and we present the future workplan.
eng
CASE;
Control;
DSC;
ObjecTime;
ROOM;
Reactive;
Run-Control;
1998
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689204/files/INT-1998-02.html;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689204/files/INT-1998-02.pdf;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689204/files/INT-1998-02.ps.gz;
Imported from Invenio.
Beker, H
Carena, W
Divià, R
Van de Vyvre, P
Vascotto, Alessandro
Schindler, M
Fuchs, M
Architectural impact of customised compression methods on the switch based ALICE DAQ system
http://consult.cern.ch/alice/Publications/1996/01/PUB-96-01.html;
http://documents.cern.ch/cgi-bin/setlink?base=preprint&categ=cern&id=ali-96-01;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/426301/files/ali-96-001.pdf;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/426301/files/ali-96-001.ps.gz;
Imported from Invenio.
Harangozo, G
Rubin, G
Simulation and evaluation of event building methods proposed for the CERN ALICE data acquisition system
http://documents.cern.ch/cgi-bin/setlink?base=preprint&categ=cern&id=ali-96-03;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/320785/files/ali-96-003.pdf;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/320785/files/ali-96-003.ps.gz;
Imported from Invenio.
Wu, B
Skaali, B
Van de Vyvre, P
Modeling of the ALICE data acquisition system
This manual describes the details of a simulation environment ALSIM for the ALICE DAQ system. It could be served as the reference manual as well as the user's manual.
eng
ALSIM;
DAQ;
Simulation;
1996
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689337/files/INT-1995-31.pdf;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689337/files/INT-1995-31.ps.gz;
Imported from Invenio.
The DAQ Trigger Interface for ALICE Standard and High Rate Running.
I present a few ideas on how to handle the different modes of running of ALICE and how to accommodate different physics requirements in the trigger system and in the DAQ.
eng
DAQ;
TRIGGER;
1995
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689423/files/INT-1995-42.pdf;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689423/files/INT-1995-42.ps;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689423/files/INT-1995-42.ps.gz;
Imported from Invenio.
Configuration Generator for the ALICE DAQ simulation program (ALSIM).
This document gives a description of the work I have done as a summer student in CERN. <BR> It describes a configuration generator for the ASIM simulator.
eng
SIMULATION;
1995
Imported from Invenio.
Van de Vyvre, Pierre
Rubin, G
Bin Wu
Kvamme, Bjarne
Harangozo, G
Simulation of Central and Dimuon Events in the ALICE DAQ System.
<P> The Heavy Ion Experiment ALICE is one of the three future experiments in the LHC at CERN. At the ALICE experiment, the detectors will produce two different kinds of data flow simultaneously: very large events (up to 39 Mbyte) at a low rate (40 Hz) and small events (up to 0.25 MByte) at a high rate (up to 1000 Hz). There will be two types of the large events (Central events and Minimum Bias events), whose combined data traffic corresponds to events of up to 40 MByte at 50 Hz event rate, and referred to as central events. The small events are called dimuon events [1]. <P> Previously we have carried out simulations to see how the system performances will vary if one of the basic input parameters is changed, provided that only central events are generated [2]. In this paper we present simulation results when both kinds of events are generated at the same time. The simulation results will show the limits of the data acquisition system, i.e. the input parameter values at which the system is still in equilibrium and the global input data rate just does not exceed the global output data rate. The graphs presented in this paper will probably help to find an optimal parameter set for the DAQ system. <P> We used a simplified version of the simulator program ALSIM [3] which is written in MODSIM II language [4]. <P> In the subsequent chapters, first we describe the simulation setup with the default values of the input parameters, then we present the simulation results, and finally we give a brief summary of the results.
eng
DAQ;
Simulation;
1995
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689121/files/INT-1995-55.pdf;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689121/files/INT-1995-55.ps;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689121/files/INT-1995-55.ps.gz;
Imported from Invenio.
Van de Vyvre, Pierre
Van der Bij, Erik
Rubin, G
Bin Wu
Kvamme, Bjarne
Harangozo, G
Simulation of the ALICE DAQ System
performance simulations.
eng
Event-Building;
Simulation;
1995
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689120/files/INT-1995-33.pdf;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/689120/files/INT-1995-33.ps.gz;
Imported from Invenio.
Nelson, J
Villalobos Baillie, O
Dénes, E
Holba, A
Rubin, G
Szendrei, L
Kiss, T
Meggyesi, Z
Bozzoli, W
Divià, R
Harangozo, G
McLaren, R A
Ritter, H G
Van der Bij, Erik
Van de Vyvre, P
Vascotto, Alessandro
Brockmann, R
Kolb, B W
Purschke, M L
Beldishevski, M
Bellato, M A
Maron, G
Kvamme, Bjarne
Skaali, B
Wu, B
Beker, H
The ALICE data-acquisition system
ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is the future LHC experiment dedicated to study the physics of strongly interacting matters. The trigger and data-acquisition system of ALICE will have to process different kinds of events: short runs of heavy-ions events resulting in huge volume of data and long runs with pp events generating less data. These two types of run result in different, and sometimes conflicting requirements and require that the computing system is flexible enough to run in different modes of operation and to switch easily from one mode to another. This paper presents the initial system design, the results of the simulation work, the prototyping which will be started. The current situation of the permanent storage industry is also mentioned due to the particular importance of this technology for the ALICE data acquisition system
eng
CHEP;
DAQ;
1996
http://consult.cern.ch/alice/Publications/1995/01/PUB-95-01.html;
http://documents.cern.ch/cgi-bin/setlink?base=preprint&categ=cern&id=ali-95-01;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/338431/files/ali-95-001.pdf;
http://cds.cern.ch/record/338431/files/ali-95-001.ps.gz;
Imported from Invenio.
Wu, B
Skaali, B
Van de Vyvre, P
Modelling of the ALICE data acquisition system