Device Support for Giga-sampling Digitizers

Abstract

In many Large-Scale Physics Experiments (LSPE), such as ITER, an efficient data acquisition and processing is required. The system uses fast Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADC) to acquire data with performance of gigabits or tens of gigabits per second. Software provided by a manufacturer demonstrates basic capabilities of the hardware but it cannot be used for the demanding applications of LSPE. Therefore, the need arises to create custom software for data acquisition, communication and processing. In the process of development of such software dedicated Control System Frameworks (CSF) are commonly used. The ultimate goal is to create a universal framework for high-speed ADCs that will be easily scalable to wide range of devices and will offer high performance that is needed in LSPE. Such framework needs to support a scalable architecture that allows processing data from many channels distributed among complex machine and offer human-friendly operator panel for device configuration. The paper presents data acquisition software developed for 5 GS/s pulse digitizer based on the DRS4 ASIC. The software is based on the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS). Operator Panels were created with the use of the Best OPI Yet (BOY). The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of development of such software highlighting highperformance problems.