VME64x-based Instrumentation at the PSI Synchrotron Light Source

by 1. Steven Hunt, 2. Peter Marshall (1. PSI, 2. Hytec Electronics)

Friday 18 Oct 2002, 10:30 → 12:00 Europe/Zurich

40-SS-C01 (CERN)

The Paul Scherrer Institute has recently brought into operation a third generation synchrotron light source - the SLS. The very high performance needed, and tight construction timescale of this machine, in turn put severe requirements on the control system. The system needed to be flexible, reliable, high performance, and still have a low cost per channel. Specific I/O types needed included 16/18/22 bit analogue input, 16 bit analogue output, binary input/output (TTL and 24V), motor, thermocouple, waveform, and scaler. Very good noise immunity was required, as well simple and fast diagnosis and replacement of faulty units. Desired features included rear I/O, slot addressing, hot swap, slot keying, and post-mortem analysis (1 sec history buffer) in case of beam loss. The necessary hardware was supplied by Hytec Electronics, UK, based on the VME64 Extensions (VME64x) standard. An overview will be given of the standard in relation to earlier versions of VMEbus and of how it was applied to a range of cards including several input/output functions: analog, digital, thermocouples, counting and motor control. In addition, the application of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) to the system will be described. The collaboration between PSI and Hytec enabled the system to be delivered and operational well before beam commissioning, and contributed to the success of the project.

Organiser(s): Chris PARKMAN / EP