EPJ Web of Conferences (Jan 2020)
Fast and Efficient Entropy Compression of ALICE Data using ANS Coding
Abstract
In LHC Run 3, the upgraded ALICE detector will record 50 kHz Pb-Pb collisions using continuous readout. The resulting stream of raw data to be inspected increases to ~ 1 TB/s a hundredfold increase over Run 2 must be processed with a set of lossy and lossless compression and data reduction techniques to decrease the data rate to storage to 90 GB/s without affecting the physics. This contribution focuses on lossless entropy coding for ALICE Run 3 data which is the final component in the compression stage. We analyze data from the ALICE TPC and point out the challenges imposed by the non-standard data with a patchy distribution and symbol sizes of up to 25 Bit. We then explain why rANS, a variant of Asymmetric Numeral System coders is suitable for compressing this data effectively. Finally we present first compression performance numbers and bandwidth measurements obtained from a prototype implementation and give an outlook for future developments.