Portability improvement of LABCOM data acquisition system for the next-generation fusion experiments

The LABCOM data acquisition system (DAQ) has set a new world record of acquired data amount of 90 GB/shot in 2005–2006 campaign. Its CompactPCI-based new DAQ enables about 80 MB/s real-time acquisition for each plasma measurement. The basic performance of a DAQ unit has already good prospects for the next-generation fusion experiments, however, some surrounding utilities are not necessarily developed to construct 10 times larger DAQ system yet. The increasing number of parallel DAQ units has made the operational and maintenance burden very heavy. So, “more distributed acquisition and centralised operations” would become expected. Here, DAQ front-end consisting of some digitizer chassis, a timing module, and an acquisition computer has been entirely re-designed to realize a lower-cost and maintenance-free “DAQ box” for fusion plasma measurements. OS and softwares have been also remodelled to use free drivers on Linux. Network-bootable diskless computers are also desirable for reducing the possibility of hardware troubles, and it simultaneously realizes to omit first-tier data storage and reduce the migration operational cost. As a result, total hardware cost could be reduced almost one-fifth than the previous. This could be the way to realize 10 times larger fusion experiment in the near future.