A Real Time Data Compactor (Sparsifier) and 8 Megabyte High Speed Fifo for Hep

A Video-Data-Acquisition-System (VDAS) has been developed to record image data from a scintillating glass fiber-optic target developed for High Energy Physics.[1],[2] The major components of the VDAS are a flash ADC, a "real time" high speed data compactor, and high speed 8 megabyte FIFO memory. The data rates through the system are in excess of 30 megabytes/second. The compactor is capable of reducing the amount of data needed to reconstruct typical images by as much as a factor of 20. The FIFO uses only standard NMOS DRAMS and TTL components to achieve its large size and high speed at relatively low power and cost.