Experience and performance of persistent memory for the DUNE data acquisition system

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the performance of 3DXPoint persistent memory technology in a large-scale particle physics data acquisition system, demonstrating its potential for high-throughput, low-latency data storage in scientific experiments.

Contribution

It provides a detailed characterization of 3DXPoint persistent memory in a real-world data acquisition context, highlighting its suitability for high-speed scientific data collection.

Findings

Achieved 1.5 TB/s throughput with persistent memory devices.

Demonstrated feasibility of single-CPU data acquisition units.

Validated persistent memory as a viable storage solution for large-scale experiments.

Abstract

Emerging high-performance storage technologies are opening up the possibility of designing new distributed data acquisition system architectures, in which the live acquisition of data and their processing are decoupled through a storage element. An example of these technologies is 3DXPoint, which promises to fill the gap between memory and traditional storage and offers unprecedented high throughput for data persistency. In this paper, we characterize the performance of persistent memory devices, which use the 3DXPoint technology, in the context of the data acquisition system for one large Particle Physics experiment, DUNE. This experiment must be capable of storing, upon a specific signal, incoming data for up to 100 seconds, with a throughput of 1.5 TB/s, for an aggregate size of 150 TB. The modular nature of the apparatus allows splitting the problem into 150 identical units operating in parallel, each at 10 GB/s. The target is to be able to dedicate a single CPU to each of those units for data acquisition and storage.