Home Day 1 - BaBar Day 2 - Beyond BaBar Logistics

Trigger and Online workshop

on the future of BaBar and the future beyond BaBar

Caltech
December 2nd and 3rd, 2004

As was announced at the Dresden collaboration meeting, we are organizing
a two-day workshop on trigger and online computing issues, to be held at
Caltech on the Thursday and Friday before the December collaboration 
meeting.

There are two major goals and some very interesting topics to cover:

  o Prepare for the medium-to-long term (Run 6 and beyond) 
    future of BaBar, through to the 2-3*10^34 era
    - Focusing on triggering (L1&L3) and the DAQ-related parts of the 
      online
    - Evaluation of luminosities, data volumes, event rates, and
      background severity and their consequences
    - Will these require more than just maintenance tweaks to the
      existing trigger, DAQ, and event filtering system?  (Quite 
      likely...)
    - How can we best use the new DCZ triggering capabilities at 
      Level 1?
    - Do we need new ideas in Level 3?
    - Beyond the DCH "decimation" and front-end-FEX developments, 
      what additional interventions may be needed in DataFlow?
    - The whole triggering and filtering strategy will be on the table, 
      as the luminosity and background increases foreseen will put real
      stresses on the overall system
    [There will be an additional online workshop early in 2005 that
    will cover issues outside the event data acquisition chain: Run
    Control, Detector Control, databases, etc.]

  o Start thinking about these issues in the context of a possible
    Super-B-factory detector
    - The aim is to identify the key challenges in triggering and all 
      parts of DAQ and online computing, and enumerate possible
      technologies for investigation
    - Changes expected in detectors (esp. tracking!) require new 
      trigger hardware and algorithms
    - Building a fast Level 1 tracking trigger for an all-silicon
      tracker is not a "solved problem" and may be challenging;
      if it's not fast enough the front end pipelining may get very
      expensive.
    - Data acquisition and processing demands at 5-7*10^35 are very
      stringent!
    - Can an "open trigger" strategy really be made to work in this
      environment?
    - Conceptual design work needs to start soon to identify issues for
      possible LOI work.  Some of these issues (e.g., the overall choice
      of trigger strategy, the possibility of L1 track triggering with
      an all-silicon tracker, and the cost of very high rate and/or
      heavily pipelined front end electronics) are potential design-
      drivers for the detector and need to be understood early.

We expect to spend roughly a day on each of the two main goals.  The 
meeting is intended to be all-plenary, but with possibilities for 
breakout sessions if they come to seem desirable.

We're inviting:
  o The existing online, DAQ electronics, and trigger experts
  o New people (groups?) interested in taking a major role in the trigger
  o Anyone interested in the physics implications of trigger/filter design 

... and we're inviting some interesting speakers from outside 
BaBar; e.g., with expertise from FNAL in silicon tracking triggering.

One of the goals of the workshop is to make clear that there is a need
and a substantial opportunity for new contributions, in exploiting the 
new DCZ capabilities and improving filtering at Level 3 and beyond!
We are therefore very interested in having more than just the "usual
suspects" come to this workshop.

Please contact Gregory Dubois-Felsmann if you have any questions or 
would be interested in attending or giving a presentation.

Information for visitors

This information is taken from the Caltech Admissions Office and is reasonably up to date.

The High Energy Physics group also has an "information for visitors" page, but it is quite out of date.


Gregory Dubois-Felsmann, gpdf at hep dot caltech dot edu
Last modified: Wed Dec 1 16:28:03 PST 2004