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Stettler, M.

Paper Title Page
PM23 Networked Attached Devices at SNS 146
 
  • W. Blokland, T.J. Shea
    ORNL, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
  • M. Stettler
    LANL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
 
  The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) diagnostic instruments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are based on the Network Attached Device (NAD) concept. Each pickup or sensor has its own resources such as timing, data acquisition and processing. NADs are individually connected to the network, thus reducing the brittleness inherent in tightly coupled systems. This architecture allows an individual device to fail or to be serviced or removed without disrupting other devices. This paper describes our implementation of the nearly 400 NADs to be deployed. The hardware consists of rack-mounted PCs with standard motherboards and PCI data-acquisition boards. The software environment is based on LabVIEW and EPICS. LabVIEW supports the agile development demanded by modern diagnostic systems. EPICS is the control system standard for the entire SNS facility. To achieve high performance, LabVIEW and EPICS communicate through shared memory. SNS diagnostics are developed by a multi-laboratory partnership including ORNL, BNL, LANL, and LBNL. The NAD concept proved successful during the commissioning of the SNS front-end both at LBNL and ORNL.