Mdaq-D3, a C++ Distributed Driver Development framework used in a nuclear physics experiment

Scientific software runs ever closer to the detector in the data acquisition chain. Mdaq-D3 (or D3), for Distributed Driver Development, is an open-source C++ framework that features centralized configuration and control of a distributed system of electronic nodes. In this framework, the topology of the system (nodes, devices, registers, bitfields, and the association between device and register access policy) is configurable and loaded at run-time. Multiple register access policies (i.e. write and read accesses to registers) are defined and implemented at compile-time. Communication is based on the ZeroC Ice middleware, while configuration is based on the CConfig framework. The D3 framework has been successfully applied to the software development of the Concentration Board (CoBo) prototype of the GET project (General Electronics for TPCs) supported by the nuclear physics community. By letting the programmer focus on access policies and on experiment-specific functions, D3 speeds up and rationalizes the software development process of multi-card systems.