IceCube: IceCube Laboratory Basics
The IceCube Laboratory (ICL) serves as the project's main computational hub at the South Pole. Each DOM, both in the ice, and in IceTop stations at the surface, communicates with processors in the ICL through a cable connection.
Each DOM Hub handles communication with several DOMs. A String Processor receives the inputs of several DOM Hubs to integrate data for an entire String. The Event Builder takes input from all of the String Processors to look for the high energy events that IceCube was built to find.
- IceCube Laboratory
- The ICL is scheduled for completion in 2007!
During much of the year, the ICL is a quiet place — the South Pole population is low, and the building runs mostly on autopilot, with occasional visits from "winterover" personnel. During the South Pole summer season, however, activity picks up.
If hardware upgrades are needed for the computer equipment, the upgrades will be performed during the summer. This is also the time of year when additional construction is being performed on the IceCube detector — with additional strings of DOMs being placed in the ice or in IceTop tanks. Each detector string has an associated data cable that must be connected to the processing hardware in the ICL.
In addition to the processor hardware, the ICL also contains office, logistic, and electronic maintenance space that is mostly used during the summer season.
One of the primary functions of the ICL is to screen and process the data collected from the DOMs and to figure out what data is important enough to be sent over the satellite directly to the University of Wisconsin (UW) - Madison's Data Warehouse, and what data isn't what our scientists are looking for, which can therefore wait until the beginning of the drilling season to be hand carried back to the UW where it will be stored for further analysis.
