A High Speed Time-Stamping and Histogramming Data Acquisition System for Position Encoded Data

A high-speed, time-stamping and histogramming data acquisition system for position encoded data has been developed for the new OPAL neutron scattering facility being built by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization´s Bragg Institute. The system described here provides the ability to capture, timestamp, and histogram position encoded neutron data. It provides this capability using the combination of a custom PCI card and a general purpose computer. Using this combination of minimal hardware with a general purpose computer it provides a flexible yet fast architecture that can handle data rates in excess of 2 million events per second. The PCI card integrates the data capture, frame generation, veto logic, and time-stamping features and then forwards the information to the computer via the PCI bus for histogramming. The histogramming is then performed on a general purpose computer where DRAM memory can easily be expanded to 16 Gigabytes and beyond. Since it is performed in software it can be easily customized to carry out many different types measurements including kinetic, time of flight, and stroboscopic. Multiple cards can be implemented in a single PC to provide a synchronized scalable system.