The ALICE data acquisition system

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is the future LHC experiment dedicated to study the physics of strongly interacting matters. The trigger and data-acquisition system of ALICE will have to process different kinds of events: short runs of heavy-ions events resulting in huge volume of data and long runs with pp events generating less data. These two types of run result in different, and sometimes conflicting requirements and require that the computing system is flexible enough to run in different modes of operation and to switch easily from one mode to another. This paper presents the initial system design, the results of the simulation work, the prototyping which be started. The current situation of the permanent storage industry is also mentioned due to the particular importance of this technology for the ALICE data acquisition system. (author)