Specifications

2.3 Hardware Considerations
The MCS-DR PC must be capable of recording data streams at a sustained rate of 112 MiB/s
with data payload sizes depending on the data source and operational mode. The hardware for the
MCS-DR PC was selected such that the speed of all components of the internal data path exceeded
this requirement. The only deviation from this is with the hard drives, where the speed requirement
is met by having 5 drives in RAID 0 instead of one drive capable of the desired rate.
The Core
TM
i7 series of processors from Intel
R
⃝
fit the need for a variety of reasons. In addition
to providing four distinct cores, each of which is Hyper-threaded to provide two virtual cores, for a
total of eight virtual cores, the i7 does away with traditional bus-based architecture, which allows
for high-speed serial communication between the CPU and peripherals. With three independent
memory channels operating at 1066 MHz each, the Core
TM
i7 processor fits well with the intended
usage profile of the MCS-DR.
The computer chosen for the MCS-DR is the Studio XPS
TM
desktop pc from Dell
TM
. Based on
the Core
TM
i7-940 processor, with 6 GiB of high speed DDR3 memory, it also offers a built-in eSATA
connection, three PCI-E 1x slots, one PCI-E 16x slot, and a 1TB hard drive suitable for containing
the operating system and system software. In addition to meeting the hardware requirements, the
Studio XPS
TM
is cost-effective option starting at around $750.00 USD, which is on track with the
target unit price of around $2000.00 USD per MCS-DR PC when combined with a low-cost (approx.
$675.00 USD w/ drives) RAID configuration and the Myricom 10 GbE Ethernet adapter (approx.
$495.00 USD).
For storage, the American Media Systems
R
⃝
Venus-T5
TM
external SATA-II enclosure was selected.
With high-speed stream recording, hard drives, rather than the busses they are attached to, tend to
be the bottleneck. Since the Venus-T5
TM
is capable of supporting five drives, the effective maximum
stream rate is multiplied by five for a RAID level 0 configuration. The enclosure was selected because
it complies with the SATA-II standard yielding a theoretical maximum transfer rate of 300 MiB/s –
well in excess of the requirements of the MCS-DR PC. Initially, the onboard Intel SATA-II eSATA
port was to be used to connect the RAID enclosure to the system. However, the controller does not
support SATA port-multiplication and thus was unable to make use of all 5 drives in the Venus-T5
enclosure. Fortunately, though, the Venus-T5 ships with a 2-port PCI-E 1x eSATA adapter which
supports port-multiplication. Testing confirms that it meets the needs of the MCS-DR.
The final hardware component of the MCS-DR is a 10 GbE adapter from Myricom
R
⃝
. Each
MCS-DR PC records data from one of the outputs of the station DP. The 10G-PCIE-8A-C+E from
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