A part of ALICE-DAQ for the Forward Detectors

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A part of ALICE-DAQ for the Forward Detectors

• University of Athens
• Physics Department
• Annie BELOGIANNI,
• Paraskevi GANOTI,
• Filimon ROUKOUTAKIS,
• Martha SPYROPOULOU-STASSINAKI
• (subgroup, of the Greek team, involved in this
  project)
• 
  

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outline

• Introduction
• DDL and DATE systems
• Status and Plans

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Introduction

• The Athens group has undertaken the
  responsibility to work for the DAQ system of the
  Forward detectors
• ( FMD, T0 , V0)
• The contribution is related to the DDL and DATE
  systems of ALICE DAQ.

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The ALICE data acquisition architecture is as
follows The detectors receive the trigger
signals from the Central Trigger Processor (CTP),
trough a dedicated Local Trigger Unit (LTU)
interfaces to a Timing, Trigger and Control (TTC)
system. The readout electronics of all detectors
is interfaced to the ALICE standard Detector Data
Link (DDL). The data produced by the detectors
(event fragments) are injected on the DDLs. At
the receiving side of the DDLs there are
PCI-based electronic modules, called PCI Readout
Receiver Cards (pRORC).The pRORC are hosted by
the front-end machines (PCs), which are called
Local Data Concentrators (LDC).Each LDC can
handle one or more pRORC. The role of the LDCs is
to ship the sub-events to a farm of PCs called
Global Data Collectors (GDC), where the whole
events are built.
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ALICE DAQ architecture (DATE v4)
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DAQ architecture (W.Carena)
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The ALICE Detector Data Link (DDL) interfaces the
Front-End Electronics (FEE) of all sub-detectors
to the Read-Out Receiver Cards (RORC) of the data
acquisition system (DAQ). The DDL Source
Interface Units (SIU) are connected to the FEEs
and placed inside the detector. The DDL
Destination Interface Units (DIU) are connected
to the RORCs, located in the counting room about
200 meters from the detector. The two DDL
interface units are connected through two
multi-mode optical fibers. The ALICE DAQ system
will contain of about 400 DDLs. The PCI based
RORC (pRORC) interfaces the DDL to the PCI bus.
It is a 33MHz 32 bits PCI master card which can
be used as data collecting device and standalone
PCI data source.
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Detector Data Link ( DDL)- Readout
system(C.Soos)
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PRORC and DDL in ALICE DAQ
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The Athens group has planned to contribute to the
run control and on-line monitoring of the
forward detectors ( FMD,T0,V0). This project
requires the knowledge of the features of the
full set of electronic cards of DDL system and,
by using the DATE system, to develop the
necessary software for the control and monitoring
of the transferred data. In Athens, we have a
full testing set-up, very similar to the one
used by CERN DAQ group for tests and
development. For the testing period we are going
to use a Front-end emulator card -FEIC- (
instead of detectorss signal). We are in close
collaboration with the CERN DAQ group. One
member of our team (F.R.) has attended the
special courses ( 6-7/9/2004) organized by the
DAQ group at CERN. We are at the stage of loading
on a PC all the necessary software ( LINUX,
DATE,libraries) and of testing the pRORC
card. Soon, we hope, the testing set up will be
under control.
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The components of DAQ testing set-upin ATHENS

• DDL Detector Data Link
• DDL-SIU Source Interface Unit
• DDL-DIU Destination Interface Unit
• DDL-Optical fibers
• pRORC PCI Read-Out Receiver Card
• FEIC Front-end Emulator Interface card

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Stand-alone use of DDL(E.Denes)
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DDL architecture(C.Soos)

• Source Interface Unit (SIU) (1)
• Interface to the Front-end Electronics (2)
• Destination Interface Unit (DIU) (3)
• Interface to the Readout Receiver Card (4)
• Full duplex optical link (5)
• Multimode optical cable of up to 200 m

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3
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Test-event generation
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DATE Data Acquisition and Test Environment It
is a software system that performs
data-acquisition activities in a multiprocessor
distributed environment. DATE
functions --Dataflow(parallel data streams moving
independently and concurrently) --Event
building --Load balancing ( Event Distribution
Manager, EDM) --Run Control --Online monitoring
Event Dump Detector analysis
(MOOD) --Information logger/browser --Run
bookkeeping --Performance monitoring (
AFFAIR) --Test-event generation for tuning and
debugging
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DATE event builder DATE Event Destribution
Manager- (EDM) DATE monitoring Package DATE
infoLogger Package DATE databases DATE banks
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DDL and DATE installation and tests a)in
ATHENS, b)later at CERN
Status and Plans

• Exchange ideas with FWD detectors experts, in
  order to collect their requirements for the
  online monitoring and control

• Other useful steps for data analysis