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heavy-ion

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TOAB03 ALICE Control System – Ready for LHC Operation controls, monitoring, site, collider 65
 
  • A. Augustinus, M. Boccioli, P. Ch. Chochula, S. Kapusta, P. Rosinsky, C. Torcato de Matos, L. W. Wallet, L. S. Jirden
    CERN, Geneva
  • G. De Cataldo, M. Nitti
    INFN-Bari, Bari
  ALICE is one of the four LHC experiments presently being built at CERN and due to start operations by the end of 2007. The experiment is being built by a very large worldwide collaboration; about 1000 collaborators and 85 institutes are participating. The construction and operation of the experiment pose many technical and managerial problems, and this also applies to the design, implementation, and operation of the control system. The control system is technically challenging, representing a major increase in terms of size and complexity with respect to previous-generation systems, and the managerial issues are of prime importance due to the widely scattered contributions. This paper is intended to give an overview of the status of the control system. It will describe the overall structure and give some examples of chosen controls solutions, and it will highlight how technical and managerial challenges have been met. The paper will also describe how the various subsystems are integrated to form a coherent control system, and it will finally give some hints on the first experiences and an outlook of the forthcoming operation.  
 
TPPA22 Standard Device Control via PVSS Object Libraries in ALICE controls, radiation, power-supply, monitoring 135
 
  • A. Augustinus, P. Ch. Chochula, L. S. Jirden, L. W. Wallet
    CERN, Geneva
  The device control in the LHC experiments is based on OPC servers and PVSS SCADA systems. A software framework enables the user to set up his PVSS project for the different devices used. To achieve a homogeneous operational environment for the ALICE experiment, these devices need to be controlled thought standard interfaces. PVSS panels act as the upper control layer and should allow for full control of the devices. The PVSS object-oriented feature has allowed the development of device Object Libraries. The Object Libraries have two main advantages. On one hand, they ease the operator task thanks to the introduced standardization of the various device control panels. On the other hand, they reduce the developer’s job as only basic software knowledge is required to set up a control application for a standard device. This paper will describe the device control architecture including PVSS, software framework, and OPC server. It will describe the Object Libraries developed for some devices, and it will explain how the Object Libraries integrate tools in the ALICE controls environment, such as Finite State Machines, access control, and trending.

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment)LHC (Large Hadron Collider)OPC (Ole for Process Control)SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition)

 
 
TPPB01 The PHELIX Control System Based on CS-Framework 3.0 controls, laser, booster, pulsed-power 163
 
  • D. B. Beck, S. Goette, H. Brand
    GSI, Darmstadt
  • M. Kugler
    HDA, Darmstadt
  The Petawatt High Energy Laser for Ion eXperiments, http://www.gsi.de/forschung/phelix/indexe.html, will offer the unique combination of a high-current, high-energy (GeV/u) heavy-ion beam with a powerful laser beam thus providing the opportunity to investigate a variety of fundamental science issues in the field of atomic physics, nuclear physics, and plasma physics. The PHELIX Control System (PCS) is based on the CS framework, http://wiki.gsi.de/cgi-bin/view/CSframework/WebHome. About 35 additional classes were developed for the PCS and ~250 objects are running distributed on 13 PCs publishing ~10000 process variables. The PCS has been upgraded to version 3.0 recently. In CS 3.0 the entire communication layer has been changed to DIM (Distributed Information Management), which is a light weight protocol for inter-process communication based on TCP/IP, http://www.cern.ch/dim. The PCS was redesigned to make use and profit from the concept of named services. Clients may receive information from a service (observer pattern) or may send a command to a server (command pattern). By these means the implementation of the PCS behaviour with hierarchical state machines was eased.  
 
TPPB07 First Steps Towards the New Spiral2 Project Control System controls, ion, linac, rfq 175
 
  • S. A. Avner, P. G. Graehling, J. H. Hosselet, C. M. Maazouzi, C. O. Olivetto
    IPHC, Strasbourg Cedex 2
  • D. Bogard, F. Gougnaud, J.-F. Gournay, Y. Lussignol, P. Mattei
    CEA, Gif-sur-Yvette
  • S. C. Cuzon, D. T. Touchard, E. Lecorche
    GANIL, Caen
  The Spiral2 project at Ganil aims to produce rare ion beams using a uranium carbide target fission process. The accelerator consists of an RFQ followed by a superconducting cavity linac and is designed to provide high-intensity primary beams (deuterons, protons, or heavy ions). The accelerator should be commissioned by the end of 2011, and the first exotic beams are planned for one year later. The control system will be a result of collaboration between several institutes, among which is the Saclay Dapnia division, which has good experience and knowledge with EPICS. Because of its widely used functionalities, EPICS has been chosen as the basic framework for the accelerator control, and people from the other laboratories belonging to the collaboration are progressively acquiring their first experiences with it. The paper first explains the organization of the collaboration, then it describes the basic hardware and software choices for the project. Some preliminary implementations are therefore given. As the project is still in its beginning phase, the paper ends by listing some questions not yet resolved for the control system definition and remaining open to discussion.  
 
WPPA12 The STAR Slow Control System - Upgrade Status controls, ion, monitoring, SNS 340
 
  • M. G. Cherney, J. Fujita, W. T. Waggoner, Y. N. Gorbunov
    Creighton University, Omaha, NE
  The STAR (Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC) experiment located at Brookhaven National Laboratory has been studying relativistic heavy ion collisions since it began operation in the summer of 2000. An EPICS-based hardware controls system monitors the detector's 40000 operating parameters. The system I/O control uses VME processors and PCs to communicate with sub-system based sensors over a variety of field busses. The system also includes interfaces to the accelerator and magnet control systems, an archiver with CGI web based interface and C++ based communication between STAR online system, run control and hardware controls and their associated databases. An upgrade project is underway. This involves the migration of 60% of the I/O control from the aging VME processors to PC's. The host system has been transferred from Sun OS to Scientific Linux and some of the VME boards were replaced with "softIOC" applications. The experience gained with the current setup will be discussed, and upgrade plans and progress will be outlined.  
 
WPPB25 Realization of a Custom Designed FPGA Based Embedded Controller controls, feedback, collider, diagnostics 451
 
  • M. Harvey, T. Hayes, L. T. Hoff, R. C. Lee, P. Oddo, K. Smith, F. Severino
    BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
  As part of the low-level RF (LLRF) upgrade project at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Collider-Accelerator Department (BNL C-AD), we have recently developed and tested a prototype high-performance embedded controller. This controller is a custom-designed PMC module employing a Xilinx V4FX60 FPGA with a PowerPC405 embedded processor and a wide variety of onboard peripherals (DDR2 SDRAM, FLASH, Ethernet, PCI, multi-gigabit serial transceivers, etc.). The controller is capable of running either an embedded version of LINUX or VxWorks, the standard operating system for RHIC front-end computers (FECs). We have successfully demonstrated functionality of this controller as a standard RHIC FEC and tested all onboard peripherals. We now have the ability to develop complex, custom digital controllers within the framework of the standard RHIC control system infrastructure. This paper will describe various aspects of this development effort, including the basic hardware, functional capabilities, development environment, kernel and system integration, and plans for further development.  
 
WPPB30 Cybersecurity and User Accountability in the C-AD Control System controls, site, survey, monitoring 457
 
  • S. Binello, T. D'Ottavio, R. A. Katz, J. Morris
    BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
  A heightened awareness of cybersecurity has led to a review of the procedures that ensure user accountability for actions performed on the computers of the Collider-Accelerator Department (C-AD)Control System. Control system consoles are shared by multiple users in control rooms throughout the C-AD complex. A significant challenge has been the establishment of procedures that securely control and monitor access to these shared consoles without impeding accelerator operations. This paper provides an overview of C-AD cybersecurity strategies with an emphasis on recent enhancements in user authentication and tracking methods.  
 
RPPA33 Search for a Reliable Storage Architecture for RHIC controls, background, collider, diagnostics 585
 
  • R. A. Katz, J. Morris, S. Binello
    BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
  Software used to operate the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) resides on one operational RAID storage system. This storage system is also used to store data that reflects the status and recent history of accelerator operations. Failure of this system interrupts the operation of the accelerator as backup systems are brought online. In order to increase the reliability of this critical control system component, the storage system architecture has been upgraded to use Storage Area Network (SAN) technology and to introduce redundant components and redundant storage paths. This paper describes the evolution of the storage system, the contributions to reliability that each additional feature has provided, further improvements that are being considered, and real-life experience with the current system.  
 
RPPB21 Finite State Machines for Integration and Control in ALICE controls, monitoring, injection, beam-losses 650
 
  • A. Augustinus, M. Boccioli, P. Ch. Chochula, L. S. Jirden, G. De Cataldo
    CERN, Geneva
  From the control point of view a physics experiment can be seen as a vast hierarchy of systems and subsystems with an experiment control node at the top and single atomic control channels at the bottom. In the case of the ALICE experiment at CERN the many systems and subsystems are being built by many engineers and physicists in different institutes around the world. The integration of the various parts to form a homogeneous system enabling coherent automatic control can therefore be seen as a major challenge. A distributed PVSS SCADA system complemented with a device and system modeling schema based on finite state machines has been used to achieve this. This paper will describe the schema and the tools and components that have been developed at CERN and it will show how this has been implemented and used in Alice. The efforts of standardizing the state diagrams for different types of devices and systems at different levels will be described and some detailed examples will be shown. The Alice graphics user interface integrating both the FSM control hierarchy and the PVSS monitoring will also be described.  
 
ROPB01 Using Sequencing to Improve Operational Efficiency and Reliability controls, collider, background, power-supply 689
 
  • J. Niedziela, T. D'Ottavio
    BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
  Operation of an accelerator requires the efficient and reproducible execution of many different types of procedures. Some procedures, like beam acceleration, magnet quench recovery, and species switching can be quite complex. To improve accelerator reliability and efficiency, automated execution of procedures is required. Creation of a single robust sequencing application permits the streamlining of this process and offers many benefits in sequence creation, editing, and control. In this paper, we present key features of a sequencer application commissioned at the Collider-Accelerator Department of Brookhaven National Laboratory during the 2007 run. Included is a categorization of the different types of sequences in use, a discussion of the features considered desirable in a good sequencer, and a description of the tools created to aid in sequence construction and diagnosis. Finally, highlights from our operational experience are presented, with emphasis on Operations control of the sequencer, and the alignment of sequence construction with existing operational paradigms.  
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