The ATLAS online High Level Trigger framework: experience reusing offline software components in the ATLAS trigger

Event selection in the Atlas High Level Trigger is accomplished to a large extent by reusing software components and event selection algorithms developed and tested in an offline environment. Many of these offline software modules are not specifically designed to run in a heavily multi-threaded online data flow environment. The Atlas High Level Trigger (HLT) framework based on the Gaudi and Atlas Athena frameworks, forms the interface layer, which allows the execution of the HLT selection and monitoring code within the online run control and data flow software. While such an approach provides a unified environment for trigger event selection across all of Atlas, it also poses strict requirements on the reused software components in terms of performance, memory usage and stability. Experience of running the HLT selection software in the different environments and especially on large multi-node trigger farms has been gained in several commissioning periods using preloaded Monte Carlo events, in data taking periods with cosmic events and in a short period with proton beams from LHC. The contribution discusses the architectural aspects of the HLT framework, its performance and its software environment within the Atlas computing, trigger and data flow projects. Emphasis is also put on the architectural implications for the software by the use of multi-core processors in the computing farms and the experiences gained with multi-threa ding and multi-process technologies.