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Entry  16 Dec 2020, Isaac Labrie Boulay, Forum, Issues building banks. 
    Reply  16 Dec 2020, Konstantin Olchanski, Forum, Issues building banks. 
       Reply  16 Dec 2020, Isaac Labrie Boulay, Forum, Issues building banks. 
          Reply  16 Dec 2020, Konstantin Olchanski, Forum, Issues building banks. 
             Reply  16 Dec 2020, Isaac Labrie Boulay, Forum, Issues building banks. 
             Reply  16 Dec 2020, Stefan Ritt, Forum, Issues building banks. 
                Reply  16 Dec 2020, Isaac Labrie Boulay, Forum, Issues building banks. 
Message ID: 2056     Entry time: 16 Dec 2020     In reply to: 2055     Reply to this: 2057
Author: Isaac Labrie Boulay 
Topic: Forum 
Subject: Issues building banks. 
Thanks for the quick reply,

> > I'm currently trying to build events through doing block transfers.
> 
> I am confused by your question. I assume you read a CAEN V792 ADC, but I do not know what VME master you 
> use. The restrictions on data alignment come from the VME master.
> I am mostly familiar with restrictions of UniverseII and tsi148 PCI-VME bridges.
> I think there is no restriction for USB-VME bridges and similar.
> 
> Anyhow. Which block transfer do you use? 32-bit block transfer (BLT32)? 64-bit block transfer (MBLT64)? 
> (no 128-bit 2eVME/2eSST transfers from the V792). Maybe the "simulated block transfer" (DMA engine uses 
> single-word reads instead of block transfer)?

I read a single CAEN V792n QDC, 18 words, and a single CAEN V1190 TDC, 2 channels so 8 words. When I poll, I 
read on every poll_event() and read whatever data is in whatever module (TDC_dataready || QDC_dataready). The 
VME master that I'm using to talk to the modules is a CAEN V1718. I am trying to read data by BLT32. Sorry for 
the confusing question (Can you tell I'm an intern?).

> > The worry was that organizing and packaging bank data into an array would produce too much dead time 
> causing too many missed events.
> 
> Valid concerns.
> 
> > I'm running into all sorts of issues such as unaligned transfers where the QDC events are unaligned, or 
> improperly aligned banks.
> 
> You should not see any problems with unaligned transfers if you give the DMA engine
> correct memory addresses as required by the hardware:
> 
> - always aligned to 32-bit (4 bytes, last two address bits set to 0)
> - aligned to 64-bits for MBLT64 64-bit transfers, this would be the normal case for the V792 (8 bytes, 
> last 3 address bits set to 0)
> - aligned to 128-bits for 2eVME/2eSST transfers (16 bytes, last 4 bits of address are zero).
> 
> You also need to specify correct amount of data to read: number of bytes should be multiple of 4 for 32-
> bit transfers, multiple to 8 for 64-bit transfers and multiple of 16 for 128-bit transfers (2eVME/2eSST).

I am transferring 32-bit words. Transferring 32-bit words should always read multiples of 4 bytes so that's 
good.

> Very often this requires reading "extra" data words. Most VME modules can generate extra pad words to 
> align event length to DMA restrictions. Sometimes you need to
> enable this in a control register (V792, V1190).
> 
> > Giving me a headache.
> 
> Me too. MIDAS recently introduced the QWORD 64-bit data type, banks of this type
> should have correct alignment for 64-bit VME block transfers. But for 2eVME/2eSST
> transfers, I still have to ensure alignment "by hand" (SIS3820, VF48, etc).
> 
> With QWORD banks, you need to use bk_init32a() instead of bk_init32().
> 
> > My question is, if I were to revert back to simple 32 bit read cycles
> 
> Yes, I always test with single-word reads first, with the 32-bit block transfer second and try the 64-bit 
> block transfer last.
> 
> Sometimes there are unrelated problems (with the VME modules, VME bus, etc, or
> with bugs in the frontend, etc) and this approach helps to identify the source
> of trouble.
> 
> > and using 
> > the fevme.cxx template's method of organizing data before sending them to the 
> > buffer, what kind of deadtime should I expect? Am I wrong to assume that this 
> > would result in deadtime at all? I'm using a CAEN V792n 16 channel QDC and the hit 
> > frequency that I'm using to test is 20kHz.
> 
> Yes, with asynchronous read using 64-bit block transfer, 20 kHz should be achievable.
> 
> The old fevme frontend is based on the mfe.c framework and implementing
> async readout requires special contortions. The structure of the new TMFE C++ frontend
> class is supposed to make it easier, but I do not have an example TMFE based fevme yet.
> 
> P.S. Without using block transfer, your max rate is limited to:
> 
> 16 channels, 1 word per channel, plus 1 header and 1 footer = 18 words (by luck, 64-bit aligned for 
> correct BLT64 block read).
> 
> using VME single-word read at 1 us per transfer, 18 us per event = 55 kHz repetition rate.
> 
> (you do not say if you have any other VME modules you have to read)
> 

Okay so transferring 18 + 6 words should give me close to 40kHz repetition rate. That's good news. I will just 
stick to 1 word transfers.

The way that transfers are done in the fevme.cxx requires iterating through 16 word arrays a number of time (3 
times I believe if you include the iterations taking place in v792_EventRead()). Does that not pose a 
significant deadtime concern? 

> K.O.

Thanks again for taking the time to help me out!

Cheers.

Isaac
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