The ATLAS Data Acquisition System in LHC Run 2

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series 2017-10, Vol.898 (3), p.32017
• Main Author: Panduro Vazquez, William
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Data acquisition systems; Data collection; Interface cards; Luminosity; Physics
• ISSN: 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/898/3/032017

The LHC has been providing pp collisions with record luminosity and energy since the start of Run 2 in 2015. The Trigger and Data Acquisition system of the ATLAS experiment has been upgraded to deal with the increased performance required by this new operational mode. The dataflow system and associated network infrastructure have been reshaped in order to benefit from technological progress and to maximize the flexibility and efficiency of the data selection process. The new design is radically different from the previous implementation both in terms of architecture and performance, with the previous two-level structure merged into a single processing farm, performing incremental data collection and analysis. In addition, logical farm slicing, with each slice managed by a dedicated supervisor, has been dropped in favour of global management by a single farm master operating at 100 kHz. This farm master has also been integrated with a new software-based Region of Interest builder, replacing the previous VMEbus-based system. Finally, the Readout system has been completely refitted with new higher performance, lower footprint server machines housing a new custom front-end interface card. Here we will cover the overall design of the system, along with performance results from the start-up phase of LHC Run 2.