Launch of the I13-2 data beamline at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron

X-Ray Microscopy Conference 2016

Bodey, A.J.^1 ; Rau, C.^1,2,3

Diamond Light Source, Oxfordshire

OX11 0DE, United Kingdom^1

School of Materials, University of Manchester, Manchester

M13 9PL, United Kingdom^2

Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago

IL

60611, United States^3

关键词: Administration system;    Computing clusters;    Diamond light source;    Financial support;    Graphics workstations;    Simultaneous analysis;    Tomographic data;    Tomographic volumes;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/849/1/012038/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/849/1/012038

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

Users of the Diamond-Manchester Imaging Branchline I13-2 commonly spend many months analysing the large volumes of tomographic data generated in a single beamtime. This is due to the difficulties inherent in performing complicated, computationally-expensive analyses on large datasets with workstations of limited computing power. To improve productivity, a 'data beamline' was launched in January 2016. Users are scheduled for visits to the data beamline in the same way as for regular beamlines, with bookings made via the User Administration System and provision of financial support for travel and subsistence. Two high-performance graphics workstations were acquired, with sufficient RAM to enable simultaneous analysis of several tomographic volumes. Users are given high priority on Diamond's central computing cluster for the duration of their visit, and if necessary, archived data are restored to a high-performance disk array. Within the first six months of operation, thirteen user visits were made, lasting an average of 4.5 days each. The I13-2 data beamline was the first to be launched at Diamond Light Source and, to the authors' knowledge, the first to be formalised in this way at any synchrotron.