Trends in on-line data processing

✍ Scribed by Massimo Masetti

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1981
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 681 KB
• Volume: 22
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0010-4655
• DOI: 10.1016/0010-4655(81)90044-8

✦ Synopsis

The development of integrated circuits has been characterized by an exponential growth of gates on a single chip that will still continue in the coming years. In parailel the price per bit is dropping down with more or less the same law.

As a consequence of this a few statements can be made:

The present 16-bit minicomputer in a small configuration is going to be substituted by a 16-bit microcomputer, and the 16-bit minicomputer in a powerful configuration by a 32-bit midi having also a virtual memory facility.

-Fully programmable or microcoded powerful devices like the LASS hardware processor or MICE, will allow an efficient on-line filter. Higher computing-speed can be achieved by a multiprocessor configuration which can be insensitive to hardware failures. Therefore we are moving towards an integrated on-line computing system with much higher computing power than now and the present distinction between on-line and off-line will no longer be so sharp. As more processing can be performed on-line, fast high quality feed-back can be provided for the experiment.

In the years to come the trend towards more processing power, at a lower price, and assembled in the same hardware volume will continue for at least five years; at the same time the future large high-energy physics experiments at LEP will be carried out within a wide international collaboration.

In this environment methods must be found for a large fraction of the work to be distributed amongst the collaborators. To accomplish this aim it is necessary to introduce common standard practices concerning both hardware and software, in such a way that the separate parts, developed by the collaborators, will be plug-compatible.