BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
The next generation of high-energy nuclear physics experiments involve colliding high-energy electrons with ions, as well as colliding polarized electrons with polarized protons and polarized helions (Helium-3 nuclei). The eRHIC project proposes to add an electron accelerator to the RHIC complex, thus allowing all of these types of experiments to be done by combining existing capabilities with high energy and high intensity electrons. In this paper we describe the controls systems requirements for eRHIC, the technical challenges, and our vision of a control system ten years into the future. What we build over the next ten years will be what is used for the ten years following the start of operations. This presents opportunities to take advantage of changes in technologies but also many challenges in building reliable and stable controls and integrating those controls with existing RHIC systems. This also presents an opportunity to leverage on state of the art innovations and build collaborations both with industry and other institutions, allowing us to build the best and most cost effective set of systems that will allow eRHIC to achieve its goals.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
Accelerator Device Object (ADO) specification and its original implementation are almost 20 years old. In those last two decades ADO development methodology has changed very little, which is a testament to its robust design, however during this time frame we've seen introduction of many new technologies and ideas, many of which with applicable and tangible benefits to control system software. This paper describes how some of these concepts like convention over configuration, aspect oriented programming (AOP) paradigm, which coupled with powerful techniques like bytecode generation and manipulation tools can greatly simplify both server and client side development by allowing developers to concentrate on the core implementation details without polluting their code with: 1) synchronization blocks 2) supplementary validation 3) asynchronous communication calls or 4) redundant bootstrapping. In addition to streamlining existing fundamental development methods we introduce additional concepts, many of which are found outside of the majority of the controls systems. These include 1) ACID transactions 2) client and servers-side dependency injection and 3) declarative event handling.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
There has been an increasing need over the last 5 years within the BNL accelerator community (primarily within the RF and Instrumentation groups) to collect, store and display data at high frequencies (1-10 kHz). Data throughput considerations when storing this data are manageable. But requests to display gigabytes of the collected data can quickly tax the speed at which data can be read from storage, transported over a network, and displayed on a users computer monitor. This paper reports on efforts to improve the performance of both reading and displaying data collected by our data logging system. Our primary means of improving performance was to build an Data Server – a hardware/software server solution built to respond to client requests for data. It's job is to improve performance by 1) improving the speed at which data is read from disk, and 2) culling the data so that the returned datasets are visually indistinguishable from the requested datasets. This paper reports on statistics that we've accumulated over the last two years that show improved data processing speeds and associated increases in the number and average size of client requests.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
For a number of years there has been an increasing desire to adopt a synoptic display suite within BNL accelerator community. Initial interest in the precursors to the modern display suites like MEDM quickly fizzled out as our users found them aesthetically unappealing and cumbersome to use. Subsequent attempts to adopt Control System Studio (CSS) also fell short when work on the abstraction bridge between CSS and our control system stalled and was eventually abandoned. Most recently, we tested the open source version of a synoptic display developed at Fermilab. It, like its previously evaluated predecessors, also seemed rough around the edges, however a few implementation details made it more appealing than every single previously mentioned solution and after a brief evaluation we settled on Synoptic as our display suite of choice. This paper describes this adoption process and goes into details on several key changes and improvements made to the original implementation – a few of which made us rethink how we want to use this tool in the future.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
Using geological map data to serve as a visualization for components of a Controls System provides Main Control Room Operators an easy way to both identify and locate conditions within specific parts of an accelerator complex that may require attention. Google's Map API provides a simple and convenient way to display some of C-AD's Controls System data and provide location and status feedback using dynamic symbols and animations. This paper describes the details of how chipmunk and beam loss data visualization can be implemented for the AGS/RHIC Controls system. Most of the server side and client site software can be easily adapted to many other similar types of data visualizations.
Wenge Fu, Seth Nemesure, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, USA
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
The NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) at BNL uses many different beams to do experiments associated with evaluating the possible risks to astronauts in space environments. This facility became operational in 2003 and operates from the AGS Booster synchrotron. In order to simulate the space radiation environment some of these experiments need to make use of beams of various energies. To simulate solar flare events, we implemented the Solar Particle Simulator in 2005. This system put in modifications to the accelerator controls to allow beam energies to be changed automatically, enabling target samples to be irradiated with many energies of the same type of ion, without having to make use of degraders. To simulate Galactic Cosmic events, they need to also be able to automatically change the ions used to irradiate a single sample. This project aims to allow NSRL to change ions as well as beam energies within a very short period of time. To do this requires modifications to existing controls as well as building new controls for a laser ion source. In this paper we describe NSRL, our plans to implement the Galactic Cosmic Event Simulator, and the status of the laser ion source.