CERN Accelerating science

Article
Title	SNS Diagnostics Timing Integration
Author(s)	Long, Cary D ; Blokland, Willem ; Murphy, Darryl J ; Pogge, James ; Purcell, John D ; Sundaram, Madhan
Affiliation	(Innovative Design, Knoxville, Tennessee) ; (ORNL/SNS, Oak Ridge, Tennessee) ; (University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee)
Publication	2005
In:	21st IEEE Particle Accelerator Conference, Knoxville, TN, USA, 16 - 20 May 2005, pp.3001
Subject category	Accelerators and Storage Rings
Abstract	The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) accelerator systems will deliver a 1.0 GeV, 1.4 MW proton beam to a liquid mercury target for neutron scattering research. The accelerator complex consists of a 1 GeV linear accelerator, an accumulator ring and associated transport lines. The SNS diagnostics platform is PC-based running Windows XP Embedded for its OS and LabVIEW as its programming language. Coordinating timing among the various diagnostics instruments with the generation of the beam pulse is a challenging task that we have chosen to divide into three phases. First, timing was derived from VME based systems. In the second phase, described in this paper, timing pulses are generated by an in house designed PCI timing card installed in ten diagnostics PCs. Using fan-out modules, enough triggers were generated for all instruments. This paper describes how the Timing NAD (Network Attached Device) was rapidly developed using our NAD template, LabVIEW's PCI driver wizard, and LabVIEW Channel Access library. The NAD was successfully commissioned and has reliably provided triggers to the instruments. This work supports the coming third phase where every NAD will have its own timing card.