Dynamic Data Structures and Concurrency in a Real-Time Data Acquisition System

We report on our efforts in developing an innovative real-time data acquisition system that makes extensive use of dynamic data structures, concurrency and state machine features. The Data Acquisition Command Language developed at the Los Alamos Weapons Neutron Research (WNR) Facility is a Pascal-based system that incorporates these features to maximize system performance, reliability and adaptability while supporting a consistent, familiar and comfortable user interface. The details and benefits of the implementation philosophy and underlying structures are discussed.