Processor Farm

The Event Building and Online data analysis functions take place within the Processor Farm. This is composed of standard commercially available workstations which are connected to the FCS switch. The data buffering within the Event Collectors both allows for efficient use of the Fibre Channel and reduces the interrupt rate of individual processors within the farm to a few Hz. This allows the use of a standard UNIX system within the farm processors. The use of UNIX allows for a much better software development environment and thus more secure software than is normally possible if a dedicated real-time operating system is used.

Control communication between the elements of the Processor Farm and the Event Collectors is performed using ethernet which is possible at the low interrupt rate being used.