CERN, Meyrin, Switzerland
INFN-Bologna, Bologna, Italy
This proposed contribution is complemented by poster submitted by Ombretta Pinazza who will explain the user interfaces deployed in ALICE.
CERN, Meyrin, Switzerland
RAS/INR, Moscow, Russia
| Paper | Title | Page |
|---|---|---|
| WE2BCO07 | 15 Years of ALICE DCS | 1002 |
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The ALICE experiment studies ultra relativistic heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Its Detector Control System (DCS) has been ensuring the experiment safety and stability of data collection since 2008. A small central team at CERN coordinated the developments with collaborating institutes and defined the operational principles and tools. Although the basic architecture of the system remains valid, it has had to adapt to the changes and evolution of its components. The introduction of new detectors into ALICE has required the redesign of several parts of the system, especially the front-end electronics control, which triggered new developments. Now, the DCS enters the domain of data acquisition, and the controls data is interleaved with the physics data stream, sharing the same optical links. The processing of conditions data has moved from batch collection at the end of data-taking to constant streaming. The growing complexity of the system has led to a big focus on the operator environment, with efforts to minimize the risk of human errors. This presentation describes the evolution of the ALICE control system over the past 15 years and highlights the significant improvements made to its architecture. We discuss how the challenges of integrating components developed in tens of institutes worldwide have been mastered in ALICE.
This proposed contribution is complemented by poster submitted by Ombretta Pinazza who will explain the user interfaces deployed in ALICE. |
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| DOI • | reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-WE2BCO07 | |
| About • | Received ※ 06 October 2023 — Revised ※ 11 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 14 December 2023 — Issued ※ 21 December 2023 | |
| Cite • | reference for this paper using ※ BibTeX, ※ LaTeX, ※ Text/Word, ※ RIS, ※ EndNote (xml) | |
| THPDP066 | Visualization Tools to Monitor Structure and Growth of an Existing Control System | 1485 |
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| The ALICE experiment at the LHC has already been in operation for 15 years, and during its life several detectors have been replaced, new instruments installed, and some technologies changed. The control system has therefore also had to adapt, evolve and expand, sometimes departing from the symmetry and compactness of the original design. In a large collaboration, different groups contribute to the development of the control system of their detector. For the central coordination it is important to maintain the overview of the integrated control system to assure its coherence. Tools to visualize the structure and other critical aspects of the system can be of great help and can highlight problems or features of the control system such as deviations from the agreed architecture. This paper will present that existing tools, such as graphical widgets available in the public domain, or techniques typical of scientific analysis, can be adapted and help assess the coherence of the development, revealing any weaknesses and highlighting the interdependence of parts of the system. We show how we have used some of these techniques to analyse the coherence of the ALICE control system, and how this contributed to pointing out criticalities and key points. | ||
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Poster THPDP066 [13.717 MB] | |
| DOI • | reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-THPDP066 | |
| About • | Received ※ 04 October 2023 — Revised ※ 12 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 08 December 2023 — Issued ※ 13 December 2023 | |
| Cite • | reference for this paper using ※ BibTeX, ※ LaTeX, ※ Text/Word, ※ RIS, ※ EndNote (xml) | |