White Rabbit Workshop 2022

Contribution List

1. Welcome to the 12th White Rabbit Workshop

08/10/2022, 14:00

A quick introduction for newcomers and setting the scene for the workshop. One of the main themes of this workshop will be the final discussions before the launch of the White Rabbit Collaboration, which aims at making WR more sustainable, higher-quality and generally more useful to more people. The second part of this presentation will introduce this subject briefly, and we will have more...

2. Status of the WR Switch (current v3 and new v4)

08/10/2022, 14:30

The presentation will summarize features available in the latest firmware release v6.0.1 of the WR Switch v3, as well as new features available in the master that will be
added to the next release. It will also explain how new features can be submitted by contributors. The presentation will then outline the architecture, features and design status of the next generation WR Switch v4. A road...

3. New WRPC release (v5)

08/10/2022, 15:00

The presentation gives an overview of the White Rabbit PTP Core (WRPC) gateware and software architecture.
It summarizes the newly introduced features and boards in the WRPC v5 release as well as those features in the pipeline for the next release.
Finally the repo management and how new features can be submitted by contributors will be discussed.

4. The new WR Collaboration scheme

08/10/2022, 16:00

In this talk, I will present the White Rabbit Collaboration, which is currently being shaped and will launch in the coming months. The Collaboration aims to gather all stakeholders of the technology in a global community that will work to ensure society and companies can benefit from the full potential of the technology. By pooling resources from all its members, the collaboration will work to...

5. Discussion session

08/10/2022, 16:30

6. BabyWR: White Rabbit in Gravitational Observatories:

08/10/2022, 17:00

A Gravitational Observatory is a large interferometer for detection of gravitational waves. The timing system of the Virgo European Gravitational Observatory near Pisa will be upgraded. A White Rabbit demonstrator was designed to validate White Rabbit in the Virgo timing system. Currently a pathfinder experiment for Einstein Telescope (ET-Pathfinder) is under construction in Maastricht (NL) as...

7. Field experience with high channel count WR systems

08/10/2022, 17:30

D-TACQ Solutions provides high channel count data acquisition systems to "Big Physics". Over 20 years, we've concentrated on the Y axis, while developing various schemes to ensure T axis synchronization both in-crate and out of crate. Porting the White Rabbit core to our existing platform solved the synchronization problem and allowed us to deliver a large "distributed oscilloscope"...

8. Operational experience with a WR-based timing system in GSI

09/10/2022, 14:00

At GSI, the White Rabbit based General Machine Timing System is used for operation of all three ring machines (SIS18, ESR and CRYRING) as well as all transfer lines. Moreover, the system is in test operation at the linear accelerator UNILAC, which serves as injector for the SIS18 synchroton. The productive system uses about 50 White Rabbit switches and a couple of hundred nodes. In 2022, the...

9. WR at CERN

09/10/2022, 14:30

Presentation of White Rabbit Timing (WRT), the new CERN project that aims at providing a generic event-based timing system covering both TAI and RF timebases.
WRT is planned for deployment in 2026 at CERN and with more than 2k nodes it will become the biggest WR installation of the laboratory.
The presentation will also provide an overview of some of the most important WR applications...

10. WR deployment at the Swiss Plasma Center

09/10/2022, 15:00

The Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) scientists work on plasma and nuclear fusion on the Tokamak à Configuration Variable (TCV) operated using a timing system designed in the late 80's. Newer acquisition devices have higher timing requirements than when TCV was built. There is a need for an accurate timing system inter-operable with the legacy timing system and with newer devices. This presentation...

11. Using White Rabbit Trigger Distribution protocol in a heterogeneous timing environment

09/10/2022, 16:00

Fusion experiments involve controlling things and measuring things over a very wide range of timescales. Processes range from experiment lifespan (years), campaigns (months), day to day operations (weeks, days), shots (seconds) and measurement samples (milliseconds to fractions of microseconds). It is very important to be able to align events and measurements over this entire range. The...

12. Precision Time Sync in Datacenters and potential applications for WR and Time Appliances Project

09/10/2022, 16:15

With the increase in demand for cloud services, horizontal expansion is a must. Getting multiple machines to perform consistently requires consensus. Consensus can be achieved by exchanging votes between all participating machines. This process is difficult to scale, while the alternative is to use a distributed clock. Depending on the method, distributed clocks can have different levels of...

13. IEEE Standardisation

09/10/2022, 16:30

The presentation will summarise how WR was included into the IEEE1588-2019 standard as the High Accuracy Default PTP Profile. It will compare the new High Accuracy protocol with the White Rabbit protocol it was based on, and provide a road map towards using High Accuracy with existing White Rabbit hardware. The presentation will also cover other contributions of the WR community to the...

14. Distributed radiofrequency signal acquisition and synthesis along a White Rabbit network using embedded boards (Raspberry Pi4 + SPEC)

09/10/2022, 17:00

White Rabbit (WR) allows for synchronizing any device on a dedicated GbE network with
sub-ns accuracy (typically 60 ps at 1s integration time) most often materialized by providing 1-PPS and 10 MHz outputs. However, practical applications for distributed coherent radiofrequency (RF) synthesis or acquisition, e.g. for a distributed RADAR requiring coherent local oscillators and synchronized...

15. New features in experimental phase:

09/10/2022, 17:30

Disciplining Si57x oscillators and a DAC-less WR; this presentation focuses on features the WR community is currently experimenting with.