What is White Rabbit?
White Rabbit is an Ethernet-based network technology that enables users to precision time-tag measured data and trigger data taking in large installations while using the same network to transmit data. White Rabbit was developed as part of the timing system update for the CERN accelerator complex. In CERN’s flagship accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), particles circulate over 11000 times per second. Components in the accelerator complex sometimes require extreme timing accuracy and synchronization down to 10 picoseconds. White Rabbit provides sub-nanosecond accuracy and a precision of a few picoseconds in the synchronization of large distributed systems.
Use case
White Rabbit was developed with an open-source philosophy in mind. Due to its release under the CERN open hardware license and its compatibility with industry standards, the technology has found various applications outside of High Energy Physics. It is used in both academia and industry, including for example in state-of-the-art network time synchronisation by the Deutsche Börse Group.
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