The ATLAS Event Builder

Event data from proton-proton collisions at the LHC will be selected by the ATLAS experiment in a three-level trigger system, which, at its first two trigger levels (LVL1+LVL2), reduces the initial bunch crossing rate of 40 MHz to ~ 3 kHz. At this rate, the Event Builder collects the data from the readout system PCs (ROSs) and provides fully assembled events to the Event Filter (EF). The EF is the third trigger level and its aim is to achieve a further rate reduction to ~ 200 Hz on the permanent storage. The Event Builder is based on a farm of O(100) PCs, interconnected via a gigabit Ethernet to O(150) ROSs. These PCs run Linux and multi-threaded software applications implemented in C++. All the ROSs, and substantial fractions of the Event Builder and EF PCs have been installed and commissioned. We report on performance tests on this initial system, which is capable of going beyond the required data rates and bandwidths for event building for the ATLAS experiment.