The fast control system for HERA-B

The HERA-B experiment is dedicated to measure CP-violation in decays of neutral B-mesons. The B-mesons are produced in a nearly overwhelming background of inelastic proton-nucleon interactions. To reconstruct a sufficient number of B-decays the experiment has to be operated with multiple interactions at a 10 MHz event rate. A granularity of 540,000 channels is required. The challenge for the DAQ system is deadtimeless readout. This requires unprecedented speed of storing and labeling the data. A 50 kHz first level trigger rate needs a fast distribution of accepted-event identifiers. Ambitious plans for drift time measurements require a high precision time reference for the front end electronics. A fast control system has been developed to fulfil these requirements. The system consists of a VME-accessible mother unit with trigger and command processing logic, a two-stage signal distribution system and one individually configurable daughter module with timing adjustment capabilities in each of more than 200 front end electronics crates.