Agenda

Review of minutes from 29-Nov-2007 meeting
Progress and milestones from JLab Electronics Group - Chris C.
Tagger in trigger - Dave D.
Online milestones for Subsystem review May-2008 and CD-3 review Jul-2008- Elliott
Online Action Items

Time/Location

2:00pm Fri 14-Dec-2007 Cebaf Center F326

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Minor rewording in Wiki pages: DAQ/Online/Controls ==> Trigger/DAQ/Monitoring/Controls.
Suggestion to form Hall D electronics pool.

Next meeting will be in Jan, date TBD.

Add to online milestones document (Elliott):
- more specific electronics milestones
- demonstration of full crate-sum trigger readout
- add dates for each milestone
Give Elke items for the Hall D Action Item Tracker (Elliott)
- more detailed than major milestonen
- include names, dates, etc.

Attendees: Elliott W, Dave A, Chris C, Fernando B, Mark I, Elton S, Dave D, Ed J, Carl T, Simon T.

Chris Cuevas gave an update on electronics:

Many specs and drawings in draft state, prototypes are coming.
Manpower is a big problem given deadlines, esp. for the crate-sum module.
Two more 20-slot VXS crates on order.
Slightly behind on FADC October milestones, no full crate tests yet.
Hai will work on FADC after completing an Accelerator project.
New hire will arrive in Jan, will work on VXS backplane clock distribution.
Some discussion ensued concerning what must be demonstrated for the subsystem and CD-3 reviews.
- critical items not yet demonstrated.
More discussion about subsystem review May 2008, scope is what has not been previously reviewed (Trigger, DAQ, etc).
- CD-3 (Lehman) review will view reports of other subsystem reviews, but likely will not probe more deeply.

Chris discussed results of manpower meeting between DAQ+Electronics groups with Claus et al:

It seems clear that the DAQ and Electronics groups cannot meet milestones with their current manpower.
Tentative agreement to try to get funding for two new DAQ positions and one new Electronics position.
Hope is to label them "critical hires" to avoid hiring freeze.
Timeline for hiring not clear yet.
Of the DAQ group hires, one will work with Dave A, the other with Ed J.

Dave Doughty discussed how to include the tagger in the trigger:

See link to Dave's talk above for numerous details.
Idea is to get tagger energy at 10**7 photons/sec. Not essential, but very useful and easy to implement, so why not!
Tagger is always on at 10**8, so it is not useful.
Tagger trigger uses same hardware as energy-sum trigger (FADC) and 250 MHz pipelined readout.
Microscope has 120 channels, 144 in broadband. Probably only microscope in trigger.
Energy sum replaced by list of channels hit, only works at 10**7 since limited bandwidth (only two channel hits per module reported).
16-bit word every 4 ns per board.
Same VXS crate strategy as for energy-sum, one crate sum board needed but with special firmware to pass hits, not sums.
One additional sum board needed in global trigger crate, also special firmware.
May want custom VXS backplane for global trigger sum crate.

Elliott presented the list of online major milestones:

General agreement to expand online milestone document to include electronics milestones. This was in originally but thought to be beyond the scope of the online. Current thought is, where else will they go?
Should combine some of the interface documents by source, not list them by function.
Much discussion about what is an "interface document" - what "specifications" are appropriate here.
Key is to ensure nothing slips between the cracks and that everyone knows who is doing what.
Should include DAQ/Electronics demonstration milestones along with interface documents.
Elliott will produce an updated version soon.