A PandaRoot interface for binary data in the PANDA prototype DAQ system

The PANDA experiment at FAIR will feature a raw data rate of more than 20 MHz. Only a small fraction of these events are of interest. Consequently, a sophisticated online data reduction setup is required, lowering the final output data rate by a factor of roughly 10³ by discarding data which does not fulfil certain criteria. The first stages of the data reduction will be implemented using FPGA-based Compute Nodes. For the planned tests with prototype detectors a small but scalable system is being set up which will allow to test the concept in a realistic environment with high rates. In this contribution, we present a PandaRoot implementation of a state-machine-based binary parser which receives detector data from the Compute Nodes via GbE links, converting the data stream into the PandaRoot format for further analysis and mass storage.