Challenges in Data Acquisition at the Beginning of the New Millennium

Data acquisition systems (DAQ) are a well-explored research domain. With increasing measurement resolution in time and space they grow and traditional approaches do not satisfy the needs anymore. The amounts of data become too big to be processed by adhoc systems. Eventually, a real-time approach is necessary when it comes to guarantee 24/7 availability service. Distribution is a common means to exploit local processing and data buffering in order to let the system grow gracefully. Such approach however introduces all the problems that go along with distributed architectures into the domain of high efficiency real-time systems. This paper presents the challenges of DAQ systems as we find them in high-energy physics experiments at CERN. We discuss potential technology attacks to address the problems of such systems. The applicability of the proposed solutions is not limited to particle physics. It fits also well industry applications like medical imaging, video-streaming or scalable WEB search engines.