Data Acquisition and Processing System for the HT-6M Tokamak Fusion Experiment

This paper describes a high-speed data acquisition and processing system which has been successfully operated on the HT-6M tokamak fusion experimental device. The system collects, archives and analyzes up to 512 kilobytes of data from each shot of the experiment. A shot lasts 50-150 milliseconds and occurs every 5-10 minutes. The system consists of two PDP-11/24 computer systems. One PDP-11/24 is used for real-time data taking and on-line data analysis. It is based upon five CAMAC crates organized into a parallel branch. Another PDP-11/24 is used for off-line data processing. Both data acquisition software RSX-DAS and data processing software RSX-DAP have modular, multi-tasking and concurrent processing features.