Preliminary Design Review of the BABAR  Online System

October 15-17, 1996
SLAC

Charge to the Review Panel


The BABAR  experiment at PEP-II is a high-precision, high-statistics
experiment.To make optimum use of the luminosity delivered by PEP II, an
online computing system of high efficiency and reliability for the
acquisition of high quaility data will be vital.  This system covers four
areas, Run Control, Detector Control, Dataflow, Online event processing,
monitoring and calibration, and prompt event reconstruction, some of the
hardware and all of the software.

This second review of the online computer system should focus on the
current status of the design and the implementration plan. In particular,
the panel is asked to evaluate

1. to examine the requirements for this system,
2. to evaluate the completeness and robustness of the design and comment on
its technical merits and potential deficiencies,
3. to highlight perceived challenges in the implementation of this system,
4. to identify potential technical risks and failure modes,
5. to asess the manpower and resource allocation and address the realism of
the schedule for design and implemenrtation.

The Review Panel is asked to report its findings in a written report to the
BABAR  Technical Coordinator (Vera LŸth). If at all possible, a draft of
the report should be completed before the conclusion of the review meeting
or soon afterwards. The final draft of the report should be made available
before completion to the deputy system manager for Online Computing, Gerry
Abrams, in order that factual errors in the report can be corrected.


Letter of Invitation:


Dear Colleague

Thank you very much for agreeing to participate in the Review of the
Preliminary Design of the BABAR Silicon Vertex Detector Online Computing
System.  This review is organized by Gerry Abrams of LBNL, the leader of
the online computing system.  Neil Geddes of RAL and Frank Porter of
CalTech are the BABAR system managers for computing and they, together with
David Quarrie, the system engineer, are responsible for all of the
computing hardware and software.

This review is scheduled for October 15-17 and will be held at  SLAC,
starting Tuesday, October 15, at 9:00 PDT.  It will conclude with a
closeout session to the online computing team on Thursday afternoon.  The
first two days of the three day session will cover general system
description and requirements, the Run Control and Detector Control, the
Level III Trigger and Online Monitoring and Processing, as well as the
Prompt Event Reconstrcution.  The third day will be devoted to the Dataflow
system, the software for the data acquisition, and three experts who
recently partcipated in the conceptual design of this system have been
invited to join the panel on that day.

Please find enclosed a list of the members of the review panel,  Terry
Schalk of UCSC has aggreed to chair the meeting and he will be responsible
for the assembly and delivery of the written report of the panel.  You will
receive the agenda and material related to the review by October 7th.


Travel and per diem for non-BABAR members ....

Thank you once again for agreeing to participate in the review,

                Sincerely



                Vera LŸth
                BABAR Technical Coordinator