High speed DAQ system for the HyperCP experiment (FNAL E871)

The HyperCP Collaboration (FNAL E871) has constructed a high speed data acquisition system which was used during the 1999 fixed target program at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to collect approximately 80 tera-bytes of data recorded on approximately 19,000 Exabyte 8 mm tapes. The average instantaneous rate of data generation was 36 mega-bytes per second from 21,000 input channels. Data was written to tape at a sustained rate of 27 mega-bytes per second. The design and operation of this DAQ system will be discussed.