A Large Matrix Sorting Engine

This paper describes the development of cost effective hardware and software for analysing large volumes of event-by-event data produced from the TESSA [1] gamma-ray detector array at the Nuclear Structure Facility (NSF) at Daresbury Laboratory. The system will look like an intelligent I/O peripheral of the mini-computer in current use for data analysis. The data will be sorted into large 2D matrices from magnetic tape considerably faster than present techniques allow. The sorting software will utilise compiler generation techniques. The hardware will be based on multiprocessing in VMEbus.