Trip Report: CERN November 1318, 2006

1
Trip Report CERN November 13-18, 2006

• Elliott McCrory
• AD/HQLAFS

2
Summary Slide

• General Accomplishments
• SDA LHC Adaptations
• Gripes
• Conclusions
• Suzannes impact on how they view us has been
  profound!

3
General Accomplishments

• LSA Understanding Authoring
• Demo application cern.accsoft.gui.frame,
  GUIDemo.java
• Impacted their thinking on Sequencer
• My perspective, coupled with an excellent toy
  sequencer from Lamont, were important.
• Gerry and Dean need to go ASAP!
• Great SDA Discussions!
• Lamont, Roger Bailey, Ralph Steinhagen, Ronny
  Billen, Verena Kain, Georges-Henri H.
• Steinhagen and Kain will be our SDA contacts
• Steinhagen sees the benefit of SDA, especially
  event-drive DAQ and DB
• Tune Tracker software
• Web Cam?
• Other personal contacts
• Enhance my ability to communicate across the
  Atlantic!

4
Comments on Existing Data Logger

• Timber is the user interface to the data logger
  DB
• Unlike our name, Lumberjack
• Current DB size 7E9 records
• Collects, generally, asynchronous 1Hz data
• No collections, explicitly, on events
• But they fake it
• The time stamp is adjusted
• The time stamp for anything that occurs within a
  cycle is the beginning of the cycle
• No idea (yet) how to do correlations between and
  among machines
• It is on their TO DO list

5
SDA LHC Adaptations

• The modes or cases of an LHC cycle are
  defined on paper
• I have started playing with this
• Data display/SDA Viewer
• Ralph thinks that a more capable viewer, that can
  be used during operations, is necessary
• Mike, Ralph and Verena do not care about the
  underlying DB for Version 1

6
2 DAQ Roles SDA Could Fill

• Data logging by event
• They dont have it
• They want it.
• Transforming SDA??
• Data logging large data sets
• BPM orbit data
• BLM first turn data
• Is our DB schema up to this task?
• Would need more capable user-driven display
  applications

7
SDA Milestone Established

• Collect beam diagnostic data from SPS during the
  May, 07, run
• See next slide
• Clock/Events?
• RS once created a fake LHC Clock server for
  testing BPM electronics
• Step through the cases (modes)
• He will get this working again.
• Ralph Steinhagen and Verena Kain are our contacts

8
SDA Relevant Diagnostics

• BPMs
• GBs of date per LHC cycle
• Need to determine what subset of it is important
  to keep
• BLMs
• 2000-point snapshots (40 usec)
• First turn into LHC for each batch is important
• Losses around collimator
• Trajectories
• Probably wont go into Data Logger

• Beam Sizes
• Emittances
• FW
• Residual Gas Monitors
• Sync Light
• With wigglers
• Fast Beam Current Transformers
• Can see individual bunches
• Lifetimes
• Calculated in hardware
• Bunch by bunch

9
Minor Gripes

• We need a key to the buildings
• They are locked on weekends
• If we got a LAFS office, then wed have a key
• For short visits, we need to identify a host
  other than Mike
• He is a great guy, but simple details (like keys,
  places to sit and group lunches) get missed
• There are many young people there that seem to be
  quite enthusiastic about ustap these people
  (develop a rotation?)

10
Conclusions

• Great trip
• Great weather
• But no snow yet
• Nice, cooperative people
• Thanks, in no small measure, to Suzanne
• Great new wine
• We have acceptance of, and a milestone for, SDA
• They are (still) ripe for expert input from
  Sequencer experts
• But dont wait!