SLAC, Menlo Park, California, USA
I-Tech, Solkan, Slovenia
We are actively upgrading BPM processors in the SPEAR3 accelerator complex as several of the existing systems are reaching end-of-life. To consolidate the resources required for development and maintenance we have evaluated and installed several processors from the Libera SPARK hardware series. We found that two common deployment methods typically used with these modules, micro-SD card and network boot, are either hard to maintain or lack flexibility. Instead we have developed an automated method based on a network boot scheme where an external EPICS soft IOC manages the assignment of specific SPARK modules to physical BPMs in the accelerator. Each module queries the soft IOC at boot time to determine which BPM it is assigned to and then starts its IOC with the appropriate BPM prefix for the PV names. This deployment method allows for quick, seamless swapping of SPARK modules by machine operators or physicists. It addition, it allows us to bring additional modules online for testing, or to move modules to different locations with a different PV prefix for the new location. This method is applicable to other EPICS-enabled devices where the device hardware also hosts an IOC.
