Author: Carvalho, B.
Paper Title Page
WEPMN036 Comparative Analysis of EPICS IOC and MARTe for the Development of a Hard Real-Time Control Application 961
 
  • A. Barbalace, A. Luchetta, G. Manduchi, C. Taliercio
    Consorzio RFX, Associazione Euratom-ENEA sulla Fusione, Padova, Italy
  • B. Carvalho, D.F. Valcárcel
    IPFN, Lisbon, Portugal
 
  EPICS is used worldwide to build distributed control systems for scientific experiments. The EPICS software suite is based around the Channel Access (CA) network protocol that allows the communication of different EPICS clients and servers in a distributed architecture. Servers are called Input/Output Controllers (IOCs) and perform real-world I/O or local control tasks. EPICS IOCs were originally designed for VxWorks to meet the demanding real-time requirements of control algorithms and have lately been ported to different operating systems. The MARTe framework has recently been adopted to develop an increasing number of hard real-time systems in different fusion experiments. MARTe is a software library that allows the rapid and modular development of stand-alone hard real-time control applications on different operating systems. MARTe has been created to be portable and during the last years it has evolved to follow the multicore evolution. In this paper we review several implementation differences between EPICS IOC and MARTe. We dissect their internal data structures and synchronization mechanisms to understand what happens behind the scenes. Differences in the component based approach and in the concurrent model of computation in EPICS IOC and MARTe are explained. Such differences lead to distinct time models in the computational blocks and distinct real-time capabilities of the two frameworks that a developer must be aware of.  
poster icon Poster WEPMN036 [2.406 MB]  
 
THDAULT06 MARTe Framework: a Middleware for Real-time Applications Development 1277
 
  • A. Neto, D. Alves, B. Carvalho, P.J. Carvalho, H. Fernandes, D.F. Valcárcel
    IPFN, Lisbon, Portugal
  • A. Barbalace, G. Manduchi
    Consorzio RFX, Associazione Euratom-ENEA sulla Fusione, Padova, Italy
  • L. Boncagni
    ENEA C.R. Frascati, Frascati (Roma), Italy
  • G. De Tommasi
    CREATE, Napoli, Italy
  • P. McCullen, A.V. Stephen
    CCFE, Culham, Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom
  • F. Sartori
    F4E, Barcelona, Spain
  • R. Vitelli
    Università di Roma II Tor Vergata, Roma, Italy
  • L. Zabeo
    ITER Organization, St. Paul lez Durance, France
 
  Funding: This work was supported by the European Communities under the contract of Association between EURATOM/IST and was carried out within the framework of the European Fusion Development Agreement
The Multi-threaded Application Real-Time executor (MARTe) is a C++ framework that provides a development environment for the design and deployment of real-time applications, e.g. control systems. The kernel of MARTe comprises a set of data-driven independent blocks, connected using a shared bus. This modular design enforces a clear boundary between algorithms, hardware interaction and system configuration. The architecture, being multi-platform, facilitates the test and commissioning of new systems, enabling the execution of plant models in offline environments and with the hardware-in-the-loop, whilst also providing a set of non-intrusive introspection and logging facilities. Furthermore, applications can be developed in non real-time environments and deployed in a real-time operating system, using exactly the same code and configuration data. The framework is already being used in several fusion experiments, with control cycles ranging from 50 microseconds to 10 milliseconds exhibiting jitters of less than 2%, using VxWorks, RTAI or Linux. Codes can also be developed and executed in Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X. This paper discusses the main design concepts of MARTe, in particular the architectural choices which enabled the combination of real-time accuracy, performance and robustness with complex and modular data driven applications.
 
slides icon Slides THDAULT06 [1.535 MB]