Status report on the development of the data acquisition system of Wendelstein7-X

Wendelstein7-X as well as the future ITER are new generation fusion devices, designed for long pulses or even steady-state operation. A large number of diagnostic systems will be implemented to investigate the behavior of the plasma. On the contrary to the previous shot oriented operation, long pulses require continuous sampling, archiving and displaying of collected data. The amount of data, that has to be handled, is some magnitudes higher and requires new techniques for compression, archiving and retrieval. In this paper, we give a status report on the progress of developing the data acquisition system of Wendelstein7-X. A prototype system was built to demonstrate all the required features for long pulse operation. This system includes three sample DAQ stations typical to the experiment, the timing system, the monitoring subsystem and the data archive. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.