Snowmass Topical Group Summary Report: IF04 -- Trigger and Data Acquisition Systems

TL;DR

This report reviews the challenges and technological advancements in trigger and data acquisition systems for future high energy physics experiments, emphasizing the need for high-speed, low-latency data processing in extreme environments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive summary of current trends, challenges, and potential solutions for data acquisition systems in high energy physics, highlighting the increasing data rates and the need for real-time processing.

Findings

Data rates are reaching exabytes per second in future experiments.

Advanced trigger systems are essential for reducing data flow.

Real-time data processing in extreme environments is a key challenge.

Abstract

A trend for future high energy physics experiments is an increase in the data bandwidth produced from the detectors. Datasets of the Petabyte scale have already become the norm, and the requirements of future experiments -- greater in size, exposure, and complexity -- will further push the limits of data acquisition technologies to data rates of exabytes per seconds. The challenge for these future data-intensive physics facilities lies in the reduction of the flow of data through a combination of sophisticated event selection in the form of high-performance triggers and improved data representation through compression and calculation of high-level quantities. These tasks must be performed with low-latency (i.e. in real-time) and often in extreme environments including high radiation, high magnetic fields, and cryogenic temperatures.