Experiences during the 2000 ALICE Data Challenge

COMPUTING SEMINAR


Title	:	Experiences during the 2000 ALICE Data Challenge
Speakers	:	P.Vande Vyvre, R.Divia, F.Rademakers / Alice, B.Panzer/IT/PDP
Date	:	Wednesday 7 June 2000 at 16:00hrs
Place	:	IT Auditorium, bldg 31/3-005
Information	:	http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/seminars
Organiser	:	G.Folger / IT

ABSTRACT

The ALICE LHC experiment plans to acquire data at 1.25 GB/sec from 2005, the highest rate of the four LHC experiments. Periodically ALICE and IT collaborate to run a long simulation of their data acquisition and high level triggers from front-end data collectors through to tertiary storage. These "Data Challenges", which involve the prototype of the ALICE data acquisition system DATE, the ALICE Off-line framework AliRoot, the new CERN data management software CASTOR and the commercial (IBM and Compaq) High Performance Storage System product (HPSS) intend to make step-wise progress towards the final data acquisition and filtering environment. The challenge in 1999 reached 15MB/sec and the target rate for 2000 was 100MB/sec. This was reached for short periods and long periods of stable running at lower rates were demonstrated. The talk will describe the components of the chain, the experience gained at each level and the lessons learned that are both to the benefit of many CERN users and influencing the next data challenge.