Real Time Processing of Detector Data

An approach is described for the construction of very high speed processing of detector data, where multiple events travel through a pipeline structure, and where temporary storage provides general data retrieval for histogram and tape writing. A formalism is presented for histogram and tape writing. A formalism is presented for structuring algorithms, where hardware elements correspond to set and arithmetic operators, and are represented by nodes in a graphical description of the algorithm. Details are given for a drift chamber processor for a Columbia-Stony Brook collaboration at Cornell, and other examples of processing structures are also discussed.