The design, creation, and performance of the parallel multiprocessor nuclear physics data acquisition system, DAPHNE
L C Welch, T. H. Moog, R T Daly, F Videbaek · University of North Texas Digital Library (University of North Texas) · 1986
The ever increasing complexity of nuclear physics experiments places severe demands on computerized data acquisition systems. A natural evolution of these system, taking advantage of the independent nature of ''events'', is to use identical parallel microcomputers in a front end to simultaneously analyze separate events. Such a system has been developed at Argonne to serve the needs of the experimental program of ATLAS, a new superconducting heavy-ion accelerator and other on-going research. Using microcomputers based on the National Semiconductor 32016 microprocessor housed in a Multibus I cage, multi-VAX cpu power is obtained at a fraction of the cost of one VAX. The front end interfaces to a VAX 750 on which an extensive user friendly command language based on DCL resides. The whole system, known as DAPHNE, also provides the means to replay data using the same command language. Design concepts, data structures, performance, and experience to data are discussed. 5 refs., 2 figs.