Organization of SINQ Data Acquisition

Client Server Data Acquisition

SINQ uses SICS as its data acquisition program. SICS is a client server system. Thus at any given time at least two programs are required to operate SICS:

1. A SICS client. SICS clients can run on any computer
2. A SICS server. The SICS server runs on the instrument computer.

The two programs communicate with each other through the TCP/IP network and a simple ASCII command protocol.

The Instrument Computer

For each instrument there is an instrument computer. This computer is named like the instrument. For example, for the instrument AMOR the instrument computer is amor.psi.ch. Instrument computers are HP workstations equipped with two disks set up in RAID 1 (mirroring) configuration. For most instruments the instrument computer is located in the instruments cabin.