FIXED TARGET Experiments and the ELECTRONICS POOL

1. FIXED TARGET Experiments and the ELECTRONICS POOL EPTAB 8-5-2003 A. Ceccucci

2. Survey of Fixed Target Initiatives • I have circulated an email among the spokespersons asking the following questions: • Overall satisfaction with the services provided by the Electronics Pool, e.g. availability of requested equipment and the transparency of the rental fee scheme. • Forecast (if applicable) of the use of Electronics Pool services for the next few years. • Specific needs of your user community, e.g. availability of high end instrumentation electronics such as logic state analysers, high bandwidth oscilloscopes or other. • There is a large amount of NIM and CAMAC modules available in the Electronics Pool but the maintenance of these modules is becoming problematic and very expensive. What type of NIM and CAMAC service would you consider essential for the future? …and to comment on the following initiatives: • The possibility to integrate old NIM and CAMAC functionalities into new VME modules is being evaluated. Would you consider this option to be interesting for your experiment? • Would you consider useful to be able to rent from the Electronics Pool a standardised test system including Front End electronics, read out interfaces and online computed to be used in small experiments and test beams? Response not overwhelming…but I will keep trying

3. 1. Overall Satisfaction • In general, good service reported. In more detail: • NA48 • Long history concerning the use of FASTABUS electronic forced on NA48 by the CERN management ~10 years ago • Intermittent financial problems due apparently to complex billing agreement (“rebate” vs. “compensation” argument, old CEC quotas etc.). As a result, the NA48 POOL account is often blocked (e.g. it remained blocked for months during 2002) • NA60 • Lack of English speaking personnel • It would be nice to have a few modules like MXI/GPIB interfaces on stock • The POOL bill is by far the biggest expense to run NA60 besides electricity. “Tag” obsolete equipment rented since ages to reduce renting bill • NA45 • The special effort to buy MXI interfaces is acknowledged • Rental fees are quite transparent

4. 2. Forecast of future FT users • Fair amount of CERN fixed target initiatives approaching the completion of data taking • Heavy ions : NA45, NA49, NA57, NA60 (until 2004?) • Kaons: NA48, NA48/1, NA48/2 (until 2004?) • Deep inelastic scattering+ hadron spectroscopy: COMPASS (>=2005?) • Antiproton Accelerator: ATHENA, ATRAP,ASACUSA, (2004?) • ISOLDE (>= 2010?) • Watch for New Initiatives at the SPS from 2006 onward

5. 3. Special needs (examples) In addition to typical items such trigger electronics (NIM/CAMAC coincidences) or power supplies: • NA48 • Support for Fastbus • NA60 • High bandwidth oscilloscopes • Keithley sourcemeters to test silicon sensors • ATHENA • Need for very specialised electronics (e.g. wave form analysers, High Voltage pulse generators) to instrument penning traps typically needed for long time  not worth to rent • ISOLDE (large number of small experiments) • Instrumentation for penning traps, digital pulse processors (e.g. 4 channels CAMAC XIA digital pulse processors)

6. 4./5. Required NIM and CAMAC service • Most FT experiments have racks and racks of standard NIM and CAMAC electronics (e.g. NA60 has 500 modules in the control room) • Some level of maintenance must be provided • Difficult to think of small tests/experiment without NIM boxes • However, the fact that the maintenance of old modules is a problem is typically understood • Concerning VME implementation of existing NIM/CAMAC designs, my feeling is that specific examples are needed to have feed-back.

7. 6.Standardised DAQ systems • Mixed response(examples): • “....Some times these ideas while looking very good end up not being practical ...We should make sure that there will be a few groups really interested and surely going to use such a system before putting any effort on it “ • “Such ideas were already considered by past committees ...” • “...It will certainly be interesting to look at the specifications of some standard VME modules that could be read out by a common DAQ system”

8. Other suggestions • It would be useful to consider the POOL a *User Consultancy Office* interface between the user and the firm.

9. ISOLDE • I have discussed the needs of the ISOLDE experiments with Thomas Nilsson (ISOLDE co-ordinator). He will contact selected experiments to find out which type of high-end instrumentation is used • ISOLDE is here to stay, in the CERN long term plan it appears at least until 2010 • Two general purpose DAQ system are used. They are based on RIO processors and read-out about 1000 channels of VME TDC, peak sensing ADC and QDC. The CAEN TDCs were bought from the POOL • There is not a big need to upgrade this general purpose systems in the near future • In addition there is a custom made “traveling” read-out system for the MINIBALL http://franchoo.home.cern.ch/franchoo/Physics/miniball.htmGermanium detector. MINIBALL is a detector for gamma rays with about 500 channels. • Typical instrumentation consists of 4 channel XIA digital pulse processors (commercial electronics). Read-out via fire wire interface, large data rate (energy and position sensitive read-outs).

10. ISOLDE (II) • External groups bring in DAQ equipment for small experiments standard DAQ equipment can be useful. Certainly willing to look at specifications. • So far groups use mostly commercially available electronics. For example NTOF tried to tender for a 1 GHz TDC but the price turned out to be way too high • POOL as interface between users and firms