The Data Acquisition System (DAQ) of the Flash Facility

Nowadays the photon science experiments and the machines providing these photon beams, produce enormous amounts of data. To capture the data from the photon science experiments and from the machine itself the authors' developed a novel Data AcQusition (DAQ) system for the FLASH (Free electron LASer in Hamburg) facility. Meanwhile the system is not only fully integrated into the DOOCS control system, but is also the core for a number of essential machine related feedback loops and monitoring tasks. A central DAQ server records and stores the data of more than 900 channels with 1MHz up to 2GHz sampling and several images from the photon science experiments with a typical frame rate of 5Hz.