Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 14 July 2006

Experience and plans from running the (SCT) DAQ

HEP

• Setting things up• Calibration mode operations• Physics mode operation• Transitions• Recovery• Modifying configurations

What to dobetter?

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 24 July 2006

The good news!

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 34 July 2006

Overview

• Almost all things were possible with enough expert hands at the wheel

• Focus is on what could be improved to make life easier, and to reduce down-time

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 44 July 2006

Setting things up

• Various mapping scans now in place: streamline checking for mapping errors– TX RX (autoconfig)– TX Module (Trim -> TV50 RMS)– RX DCS (Hard reset scan)

• Perhaps a case for a 1-Pt QCAL scan test at “physics threshold” – look at trim?

• Opto tuning – improvements to algorithms– Hard reset between bins for TX current– Rx Threshold algorithm improved– Still some worries over marginal TX.

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 54 July 2006

Timing-in

• Good to ~few ns gross timing done by looking for top/bottom of module co-incidence– Combining statistics between modules– Relatively few stats required

• (few hundred cosmics)

– Good agreement with “offline monitoring”

• Module module done by dead reckoning (at SR1)

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 64 July 2006

Mark/Space Ratio(Clock jitter in TX)

• Test done for several rods in SR1 sector – enough stats to test algorithm

• Generally seems to work– Slow– Some funny channels– Investigations into BOC plugins

proceeding

• Some improvements in algorithm made to attempt to flag outlying cases

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 74 July 2006

Calibration mode

• Can “do the job”– New response curve taken and used for SR1

cosmics tests

• Less fault tolerant to errors from modules– Still aborts after single module failure– To be improved?

• Would benefit from tools to do statistics on different modules – Nasty fudge used to combine data for timing scan– Need to be able to compare against reference set

rather than just labelling “good”/”bad” modules

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 84 July 2006

Things to speed up calibration?

• Diagnostics from DSP greatly improved– Pick out which modules are causing problems

• Improved fault tolerance?– Decrease wasted down-time.

• Has histogram read-out slowed down? – If so where? ROD? Network? NFS demon?

• Quick turn-around with updated configuration (see later)

• Could pack trims better to reduce configuration loading to ROD by factor of ~2.– Simultaneous change needed to DSP code and to

SctRodDaq

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 94 July 2006

Physics mode• Standard operation of SCT HW/SW eventually

good• Couldn’t read out histograms during physics

mode when running– And slow when paused

• Runs able to continue for several hours.• What stopped “good” runs?

– Crash of ROS/FILAR• Formatter allowing “illegal” data through?

– LV trips from SCT modules• Reduce frequency• Recover

– Occasionally loss of synchronisation with TRT?• Identify• Add counter resets

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 104 July 2006

Non-expert operation?

• Work to be done in:– Detector safety (DCS)– Module initialisation– Module recovery– Information in error messages– Getting configurations to offline– Feedback on synchronisation– Other “error” states

• Recovery time after power failure was I think ~ 8 hours?

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 114 July 2006

Transitions

• Physics Calibration transition ok for SCT alone

• Cal. couldn’t be done in configuration containing TRT

• Taking out subdetector involved lots of different resources (EventBuilder, ROS, RODs, …)

• I thinkTDAQ has a way to streamline this?

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 124 July 2006

Configuration tools

• SR1 highlighted the need for tools to compare, update and merge configurations.

• Chris and Bruce produced/working on some tools for xml.

• ‘Final’ database configuration solution now has same functionality as xml.

• GUI display of configuration parameters?

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 134 July 2006

Headaches• ROS machine failure

– Required reboot, remount, …– Possibly linked to invalid data coming from ROD– Some ideas as to what might be the cause…

• Occasional initialisation problems in SctRodDaq start-up– Not really investigated – replace delays in synch-

init?• “Full” ROD (inc. s-link) reset seems to require

crate reboot (slow!)– What isn’t reset on “reset”?

• Module start up needs Hard Reset, and then send configs automated.– Problem: DCS hand-shaking

• Automation of module power cycle required (from DAQ)

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 144 July 2006

Issues for the pit• Configuration (inc. DCS) still a big area • First large-scale multi-crate test• Parallelism needed for analysis• Much harder to reset off-detector hardware!• Auto recovery required for

– Modules– OPTO– DAQ systems

• Can we still use NFS for data transfer?• Auto-archival to CASTOR through firewall?• Set up of trigger chain (resets etc) through LTPs.• ROD monitoring not physics-ready

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 154 July 2006

If things don’t work

• Don’t just grumble to yourself…• Grumble to the experts!

– Wiki page: – http://www.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/daq-bin/

wiki.cgi/UserStories– Email address:– atlas-project-sctroddaq@cern.ch

• We rarely bite and will endeavour to help!

Alan Barr - SCT DAQ 164 July 2006

The good news!