Free-running data acquisition system for the AMBER experiment

¹ CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
² Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
³ Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
⁴ Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany
⁵ Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia
⁶ Technical University of Munich, Germany

Published online: 23 August 2021

Abstract

Triggered data acquisition systems provide only limited possibilities of triggering methods. In our paper, we propose a novel approach that completely removes the hardware trigger and its logic. It introduces an innovative free-running mode instead, which provides unprecedented possibilities to physics experiments. We would like to present such system, which is being developed for the AMBER experiment at CERN. It is based on an intelligent data acquisition framework including FPGA modules and advanced software processing. The system provides a triggerless mode that allows more time for data filtering and implementation of more complex algorithms. Moreover, it utilises a custom data protocol optimized for needs of the free-running system. The filtering procedure takes place in a server farm playing the role of the highlevel trigger. For this purpose, we introduce a high-performance filtering framework providing optimized algorithms and load balancing to cope with excessive data rates. Furthermore, this paper also describes the filter pipeline as well as the simulation chain that is being used for production of artificial data, for testing, and validation.