Multi-Processor Based Fast Data Acquisition for a Free Electron Laser and Experiments

Free electron LASer in Hamburg (FLASH) at DESY is a user facility with laser-like radiation source in the VUV and soft X-ray range. It is also a pilot facility for the future XFEL. A fast data acquisition system (DAQ) to support the accelerator operation and the user experiments was developed. The system collects data from hundreds of ADC channels in the range of 1 M up to 2 G samples per second. In addition it allows collecting images from digital video cameras. All the data is collected in a shared memory of a central multiprocessor computer. Several processes are used to calculate e.g., the orbit, energy or photon flux, or are used as feedback loops to improve the stability of the linac. A long time archiving of the collected data from the accelerator and from the FEL experiments on a 24 TB disk and finally on a tape is provided. The whole system is integrated in the DOOCS control system of FLASH. It is a novel approach to combine a fast DAQ system with a accelerator control system.