Tübingen 2003 – scientific programme

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HK: Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 45: Instrumentation und Anwendungen VI

HK 45.7: Talk

Thursday, March 20, 2003, 18:45–19:00, C

Prototype of a Dedicated Multi-Node Data Processing System for Realtime Trigger and Analysis Applications — •Daniel Kirschner, Ingo Fröhlich, Adrian Gabriel, Wolfgang Kühn, Jörg Lehnert, Tiago Perez, Daniel Schäfer, and Alberica Toia — II. Phys. Inst. Giessen, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 14, 35392 Giessen

Modern experiments in hadron and heavy ion physics like the HADES detector at GSI-Darmstadt produce a large amount of data that has to be distributed, stored and analyzed. Analysis of this data is very time consuming due to the large amount of data and the complex algorithms needed. This problem will become even more severe in future projects such as the LHC physics program and PANDA / CBM at GSI. As an alternative to large Linux PC farm architectures, we have studied a dedicated multi-node and multi-CPU computing architecture interconnected by Gigabit-Ethernet. Dedicated hardware has advantages over general-purpose PCs in terms of skaleability, price per computational unit, predictability of time behavior (important for real time applications) and ease of administration. Gigabit-Ethernet provides an efficient and standardized infrastructure for data distribution. A prototype VME-Bus board for data distribution and analysis in a multi-node environment has been developed. The card is divided into two major units: a network unit featuring two Gigabit Ethernet over Copper connections and a computational part featuring a TigerSHARC Digital Signal Processor. Features and applications of the board will be discussed.