The trigger control system for the COMPASS

The architecture, features and performance of the TICS (Trigger Control System) designed and built for COMPASS, a fixed target experiment at CERN's SPS, are discussed. The TICS is a two channel optical distribution system which is able to broadcast information from a single source to about 1000 destinations using a passive optical fiber network. The TCS distributes control information and trigger together with an event identifier and provides reference timing in all front-end cards with a precision of 50 ps RMS. Furthermore it generates random triggers for monitoring of the detector performance during data taking.