Multi-Processor Data Acquisition and Monitoring Systems for Particle Physics

A high speed distributed processing system, using PDP-11 and VAX processors, is being developed at Fermilab. The acquisition of data is done using one or more PDP-lls. Additional processors are connected to provide either data logging or extra data analysis capabilities. Within this framework, functional interchangeablity of PDP-11 and VAX processors and of the PDP-11 operating systems, RT-11 and RSX-11M, has been maintained. Inter-processor connections have been implemented in a general way using the 5 megabit DR11-W hardware currently selected for the purpose. Using this approach we have been able to make use of several existing data acquisition and analysis packages, such as RT/MULTI, in a multi-processor system.