A proposed scalable parallel open architecture data acquisition system for low to high rate experiments, test beams and all SSC detectors

A data acquisition system architecture which draws heavily from the communications industry is proposed. The architecture is totally parallel (i.e. without any bottlenecks), capable of data rates of hundreds of gigabytes per second from the detector and into an array of online processors (i.e. processor farm), and uses an open systems architecture to guarantee compatibility with future commercially available online processor farms. The main features of the system are standard interface ICs to detector subsystems wherever possible, fiber-optic digital data transmission from the near-detector electronics, a self-routing parallel event builder, and the use of industry-supported, high-level language programmable processors in the proposed Bottom Collider Detector (BCD) system for both triggers and online filters. A brief status report of an ongoing project to build a prototype of the proposed data acquisition system architecture is given. The major component of the system, a self-routing parallel event builder, is described in detail