A Final Review of the Performance of the CDF Run II Data Acquisition System

Abstract

The CDF Collider Detector at Fermilab ceased data collection on September 30, 2011 after over twenty-five years of operation. We review the performance of the CDF Run II data acquisition systems over the last ten of these years while recording nearly 10 inverse femtobarns of proton-antiproton collisions with a high degree of efficiency - exceeding 83%. Technology choices in the online control and configuration systems and front-end embedded processing have impacted the efficiency and quality of the data accumulated by CDF, and have had to perform over a large range of instantaneous luminosity values and trigger rates. We identify significant sources of problems and successes. In particular, we present our experience computing and acquiring data in a radiation environment, and attempt to correlate system technical faults with radiation dose rate and technology choices.