sPHENIX EMCal discussion

[Martin Purschke <purschke AT bnl.gov>]

Hi Dennis,

the plan is recording 16 samples per channel. Please keep in mind that
this is already a change in plans from 12 samples, and that forced us to
reduce the number of digitizers per XMIT board from 4 to 3 to stay
within the front-end bandwidth limits. Past that stage, whatever
generates more data will reduce the event rate, and eventually we will
run into our data logging limits.

The classic zero suppression scheme is to see if those 16 samples
contain a "signal" - where it remains to be determined how we define
that, exactly - and zero-suppress the others. I would assume that we try
to time the trigger in a way that the peak of the waveform is in the
first half of the samples so we have some baseline before and catch the
tail, as you can see in the attached raw waveform. This is from the 2016
test beam where we kept 24, not 16, samples, but you get the idea.

Whatever is contained in those 16 samples is what you have - including
noise. Now we are already pushing hard against the limits of what the
RCF told us is doable. Most of it comes from the TPC, but generally,
almost every current estimate of the overall data logging rate is
exceeding this limit, some even by factors of more than 3. This means
that we will not be able to afford a dramatically relaxed threshold and
keep most, if not all, emcal waveforms for many events. We can tweak
that to the breaking point, but more data/event will mean fewer events.

Do we need such a full view for every event? We could generate a slow
trickle of such full events. Say every few seconds we tag an event
special so the DCM2s skip the zero-suppression (that would need to get
implemented), and then you get some events like that without breaking
the bank. (We are thinking of that for special events such as in-beam
pedestal events on empty crossings). Not sure if that, and what minimum
fraction of events, would satisfy such a fluctuation analysis.

Also, what is your current assumption how stable the baseline is? 1.5
bits? 2? I guess early on we could take special runs with a few hundred
thousand events in a non-zero-suppressed mode and see if that is an
issue or not, but we cannot expect huge statistics here.

We can kick this around some more as needed...

        Martin


On 12/19/18 13:55, Perepelitsa, Dennis wrote:
> Hi EMCal group,
> 
> There was some discussion at the recent Collaboration Meeting regarding 
> whether we would read out every EMCal channel every event, or if there will 
> be some zero / noise suppression. For the heavy ion jet reconstruction, it 
> may be important to have every channel to get both positive and negative 
> noise fluctuations.
> 
> What is the current thinking or plan for both p+p and Au+Au running? What 
> do the currently estimated data throughput and volume numbers assume in 
> terms of information from the EMCal?
> 
> Dennis
> 
> Dennis V. Perepelitsa
> Assistant Professor, Physics Department
> University of Colorado Boulder
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 


-- 
Martin L. Purschke, Ph.D.        ;   purschke AT bnl.gov
                                 ;   http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/~purschke
                                 ;
Brookhaven National Laboratory   ;   phone: +1-631-344-5244
Physics Department Bldg 510 C    ;   fax:   +1-631-344-3253
Upton, NY 11973-5000             ;   skype: mpurschke
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