Data acquisition from high-rate detectors at MAX IV

TL;DR

This paper describes the design, implementation, and performance evaluation of a high-rate data acquisition system at MAX IV, integrating various detectors and cameras for synchrotron applications with real-time feedback and processing capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a unified DAQ system for multiple detector types at MAX IV, enabling high throughput, live feedback, and on-the-fly data processing for synchrotron experiments.

Findings

Achieved high data throughput and detector operating rates.

Integrated diverse detectors into a common DAQ system.

Enabled real-time data feedback and processing.

Abstract

At MAX IV pixelated area detectors are operated at high frame rates to take advantage of the X-ray beam properties available from the fourth generation synchrotron in scattering, diffraction and imaging applications. A variety of photon counting and charge integrating detectors and sCMOS cameras have been integrated into a common data acquisition (DAQ) system in which data are streamed to a central Kubernetes cluster, mounting an IBM Storage Scale (GPFS) file system. The DAQ system provides live feedback from the detectors/cameras and extends to enable on-the-fly data processing. Control system integration via Tango provides a standardised single interface for controlling all DAQ components. Starting from an overview of the detector types in use, we describe the design and implementation of the MAX~IV detector-DAQ system and report a quantitative study of its performance in terms of data throughput and detector operating rates.