Data Acquisition & Controls
The Neutron Sciences data acquisition system is designed to allow experimental control and the collection of neutron scattering data from a variety of neutron scattering instruments. Each instrument has a dedicated data acquisition system that operates behind a firewall and is independent from the systems operating on other instruments. The data acquisition system has three different subsystems with each subsystem designed to handle data with different guaranteed delivery times. More information on these systems can be found by clicking on the various parts of the picture to the right or by clicking on the DAS overview link near the end of this paragraph. The system uses network PCs running a windows operating system. During more than three years of testing we have experienced no operating system related failures.
In addition judicious use of the operating system's preemptive interrupts has enabled us to achieve soft real-time performance without the need to use other real-time operating systems. This use of a single operating system has lead to significant savings in development time and has also lead to more robust control software. In addition to software development, a number of custom hardware components were also developed. This hardware was required to meet the extreme data rates that are expected at SNS. More information about data acquisition can be found by reading the DAS overview document.
