A distributed real-time system for event-driven control and dynamic data acquisition on a fusion plasma experiment

A distributed real-time trigger and timing system, designed in a tree-type topology and implemented in VME and CAMAC versions, has been developed for a magnetic confinement fusion experiment. It provides sub-microsecond time latencies for the transport of small data objects allowing event-driven discharge control with failure counteraction, dynamic pre-trigger sampling and event recording as well as accurate simultaneous triggers and synchronism on all nodes with acceptable optimality and predictability of timeliness. This paper describes the technical characteristics of the hardware components (central unit composed by one or more reflector crates, event and synchronism reflector cards, event and pulse node module, fan-out and fan-in modules) as well as software for both tests and integration on a global data acquisition system. The results of laboratory operation for several configurations and the overall performance of the system are presented and analysed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.