Event Building Schemes for Fibre Channel Switching Networks

The future High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments will need powerful communication systems for data acquisition and processing. Fibre Channel is one of the most promising technologies for switching networks that are typically used in data acquisition systems. The efficiency and memory requirements of such systems basically depend on the applied event building technique. Extensive simulations should be accomplished to decide what the optimal configuration of a data acquisition system is and what the best event building scheme is for that system. In this paper we investigate various event building schemes which are well adapted to a Fibre Channel switching network. First we describe four generic event building algorithms available for any switching network, then study their feasibility in a Fibre Channel implemen tation. Finally we give an overview about the requirements for graphical presentation of the simulation results.