2. STAR Project Summary
Excerpt from the STAR Monthly Report - November, 1995
The annual RHIC TAC review of STAR was held in early November. A draft of the committee report praised the STAR Project for impressive technical progress. The committee also recommended that STAR "undertake the development of an adjusted construction schedule." This plan would take into account constrained funding in FY96 and FY97, and the three-month stretch in the RHIC completion date. STAR Management will present the plan at the STAR collaboration meeting in January and seek collaboration approval before proposing it to RHIC Management.The STAR assembly building is progressing despite the many problems with the general contractor. BNL plant engineering is closely monitoring the activities and has extended the 40-day cure notice in an effort to allow the construction firm every opportunity to complete the job. As a result of the likely delay in the completion of the building, STAR has arranged for temporary storage for the first magnet steel component arrivals in an AGS building.
Installation and testing effort in November was spent completing initial task and resource planning exercises in preparation for the TAC Review. Negotiations with AGS management have resulted in an agreement through which the AGS will provide a pool of technical resources for the installation and testing of the STAR Detector.
Mechanical integration for November continued to focus on subsystem interfaces as well as proposed changes to subsystem interfaces. A STAR Note (SN228) was generated in response to an action item created at the TAC Review that documents an investigation into the possibility of installing EMC supports from outside the magnet after the TPC is installed. Integration meetings between the TPC and SVT groups continued. Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD) integration is continuing. The main activity for Electrical Integration was to establish a standard geometry (naming/numbering) convention for STAR.
Much conventional systems effort was spent preparing for the TAC review. BNL Plant Engineering has addressed the feasibility of using existing air handling units to supply air conditioning to the WAH and assembly building. Development of one-line conventional power drawings is proceeding for the WAH, assembly building, and the rack and control rooms. Development of clean power one-lines is proceeding for the platforms and rack and control rooms. Conventional Systems is awaiting direction from the integration group regarding the final platform structure design.
TPC Summary and Highlights
The TOF/CTB rails have been bonded to the OFC Gas Vessel and the vessel has been removed from the winding mandrel. The first ten inner sector pad planes have arrived from BMC. The first wheel has been assembled and the fabrication effort at STADCO is nearly on schedule with no significant problems. Mirror bundles and holders are due to arrive from Russia soon. The design of raft assembly tooling and raft supports is in work at Abele Engineering. The TPC lifting fixture has been fabricated and is ready for proof testing. The TPC test stand is in work and should be ready in time for the arrival of the TPC wheels in January. The sector mounting tool for the inner sector is complete and the SMT support is in work.
Magnet Summary and Highlights
A visit was made in November to Tesla Engineering which is manufacturing the main and space trim coils. The winding process is working well, with eight double pancakes in hand. The heating system for potting should permit production of a finished package in December. The group also visited Cruesot- Loire industries, which is producing most of the steel as a subcontractor for PCC. The facilities were impressive, and production is proceeding on a schedule that fits PCC's machining. Work is continuing on the design of the pole tip supports and the horizontal drives for the detector.
Electronics Summary and Highlights
FEE effort in the beginning of November was dedicated to the TAC review. The committee was impressed with FEE's technical progress, and said that the group was in good shape. At the review and afterward, there was considerable discussion of budgeting, due to current and expected (FY97) cash-flow problems.The 8% build scheduled for 1995 has been officially reduced to 4%. Because of the impending relocation of the National Energy Research Supercomputer Center from Livermore to Berkeley, the FEE group must move its labs to smaller quarters. The readout board layout was completed and is being checked. It should be sent out for production in early December. The "8%" production SAS chips arrived back from Orbit, and were packaged and returned to LBL. Additional studies on the SAS chips were completed. During the ground plane pulser calibrations, all 16 SAS inputs will receive large signals simul- taneously. The response of FEE cards to sparks in the chamber is also being studied, as suggested by the TAC committee. Several hardware items arrived from the SSC, including a Tektronix TDS640 digital oscilloscope, power supply, function generator, Tera-ohmmeter, conductivity meter, and two geiger counters.
The prototype temporary receiver card (ROSIE) was installed in the DAQ lab at LBL and has received 10,000 consecutive events generated by the FEE prototype readout card with no errors. The production version of this card was received from the printed circuit fab, and a single copy has been populated and is being tested. The design of the programmable data source, ROSEBUD, which will be capable of running sequences of events with arbitrary data patterns, has been completed and is in PC layout. The ASIC did not progress in November. A DAQ software workshop has been scheduled for the four days immediately following the collaboration meeting in January.
The trigger hardware is undergoing small modifications as the group sets up another system test and gets closer to the final production prototypes. Final versions of the Cockroft-Walton high voltage generators and control circuits are being installed on the CTB hardware at Rice. In software, a reorganization of the database has begun that will allow easier access to a full event flow from the event generator through all levels and into level 3.
A preliminary design of an EPICS screen for monitoring the TPC readout board has been developed at Creighton and presented to TPC working group members at LBL for comments and suggestions. A used Sun Workstation was purchased by Creighton University for Slow Controls development work. A paper and poster on the STAR Slow Controls System, with emphasis on the STAR system test, was presented by John Meier to the International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems (ICALEPCS) in Chicago.
Computing Summary and Highlights
Sirius, the SUN SPARC10, was moved to the BNL Datacenter where it was brought up on the FDDI ring that connects the RDG machines. This move is expected to improve access from the RDG machines to the data on sirius' disks.The on-line software effort consisted of working on the prototype state manager for the system test and on investigating the Java language for its usefulness in the on-line system. The second versions of the offline software functional model design diagrams, glossary, and data dictionary were completed by all the software groups. A study of the offline computing requirements (cpu and data volume) for STAR was completed as part of the ROCOCO-2 report. Most simulation and analysis packages were rebuilt and installed under the new AFS system. The TPC slow simulator was increased in speed by nearly a factor of ten, thanks to an improved method of generating electronic noise which comes in before the shaper module. Simulations of various beam pipe designs and materials were conducted to study their effects on tracking and momentum resolution.
The STAR software library repository was moved to the AFS file system. The analysis shell activity focused on implementing an early running prototype of the new shell which is called Moast.
The following contribution was submitted by Doug Olson, LBNL
Eventually STAR needs to develop its computing capabilities to handle > 10 million events/year for analysis by about 100 physicists.
The goal we have decided upon for 1996 is to have the capability, over the course of the year, to handle the equivalent of one day's worth of data when STAR is running. This is about 100K events, 2 TB of data, and enough cpu capacity to generate, simulate and analyze these events.
Naturally we have more ambitious plans for the following years.
Brookhaven recognizes and accepts this role, and I am pleased to announce the appointment, effective immediately, of Bruce Gibbard as Interim Head of RHIC Computing. In this role, Bruce will assemble a team and lead the effort to establish this facility at BNL, and will act as spokesman for the RHIC computing interests as these plans take shape and are subjected to review over the next several months.
Bruce has headed the BNL High Energy/Nuclear Physics Computing group since 1990. He has been a principal member of the team that established the computing facilities for the D0 experiment at Fermilab, and has been intimately involved in the studies of computing requirements for RHIC experiments since the early workshops at the inception of the Project. For the next several months, Bruce will assume responsibility for the RHIC computing resources at Brookhaven, including the ramp-up of technical effort, the evolution of current facilities and the initiation of projects required to select and demonstrate technologies appropriate to RHIC computing. Bruce will also organize and direct a Task Force involving experts from BNL and from each of the RHIC experiments to follow up on the ROCOCO report with a detailed, proposal for the implementation of a facility that will be ready to meet the RHIC computing needs when the experiments become operational in 1999. In the meantime, the Laboratory will be seeking candidates for the permanent head of RHIC computing.
The computing requirements for RHIC break new ground in terms of the amount of data to be handled, and the amount of raw processing power required. This will be a major undertaking for the community of RHIC users, and a significant new initiative for the U.S. Nuclear Physics program as a whole. I am confident that, with the support of the entire RHIC community, we will be equal to the task.
As another calendar year draws to a close we get closer to the eventual completion of the RHIC project and the start of the RHIC physics program. Progress this past year on the RHIC accelerator has been impressive. All but a handfull of the arc dipoles are now in place in the tunnel. On the order of 35% of the Corrector-Sextupole-quadrupole magnets are also in place. I took a STAR visitor to BNL down into the RHIC tunnel on Friday (12/29) and saw the various stages involved in connecting the magnets together. Starting from under the collider center building and walking towards the Wide Angle Hall one sees magnets having there current and control leads hooked up, the Helium conduits containing these leads then joined, the beam pipes of the magnets connected with a short bellows, the whole region between the magnets wrappped in multiple layers of Aluminized Mylar, a metal clam shell placed over the region, and the finished connection with the long seams of the clam shell and the ends of this connecting tube welded to the magnets casings.
Work continues on the STAR assembly building. I toured around the site last week with Bruce Miller (STAR conventional systems manager). The structural steel structure is complete. The roof has been put on as well as some of the steel siding. The assembly building consists of a single volume space of ~60 ft. by ~100 ft. by 60 ft. high, as well as some utility rooms at one end. The utility rooms fill an area of ~60 ft. by ~30 ft. with two levels. The utility rooms are roughed in and the installation of the lights was going on last week. The 40 ton crane is up on the rails in the Assembly building but has not yet been commisioned. Walking around the site now one can start to get an idea of how the assembly and operation of the STAR detector will be. The present plan has STAR getting occupancy of the Assembly building in February.
I'm looking forward to the coming year and beyond here at Brookhaven as the STAR detector will actually begin to be assembled. Parts of the magnet steel will begin arriving here at BNL in January. The assembly of the magnet is slated to start in early Spring. By the time of the next collaboration meeting here at BNL (~August) people should be able to go on tours of the STAR site and see the magnet transport system, the magnet undercarraige, and the lower set of return steel bars put together and about ready for the installation of the actual aluminum coils. The future years here at Brookhaven should be fascinating.
3. Contributions
RHIC Computer Center news
B R O O K H A V E N N A T I O N A L L A B O R A T O R Y
M E M O R A N D U M
To: RHIC Users
From: Satoshi Ozaki
Date: January 2, 1996
Subject: Appointment of Bruce Gibbard as Interim Head of RHIC Computing
As you are all aware, planning for a computing facility to meet the needs of the RHIC experiments for data reduction and analysis has been in progress for some time through discussions involving the RHIC detector collaborations, the computing staff at Brookhaven, and the DOE. Presently, a committee convened by Tom Ludlam and chaired by Shiva Kumar (the Rococo II Committee) is reaching the conclusion of a six-month study to provide an updated estimate of requirements, and to make recommendations on the implementation of such a facility. In its interim report, submitted last October, this committee's primary finding was that "Brookhaven National Laboratory has a responsibility to play a leadership role in the organization and implementa- tion of a computing facility at Brookhaven to support the storage and analysis of data acquired by the RHIC experiments."
4. Notice of Meetings:
STAR Collaboration meeting, 8-13 Jan. 96.
RICE University, Houston Tx.
There will be trigger and controls workshops on Jan. 7th and a DAQ workshop on Jan. 13-16, also taking place at RICE. For further information please see the calendar area of the STAR WWW page.
5. Christies Corner
Season's Greetings to all from Long Island. The weather has been quite cold here for most of the month of December.
6. Comings and goings at STAR
None reported this month.