Overview of the GANIL Control Systems for the Different Projects Around the Facility

The Ganil facility is drastically extending its possibilities with new projects, so increasing its capabilities in nuclear physics. The most significant one is the Spiral2 installation based on a linear accelerator, then to be associated with the S3, NFS and DESIR new experimental rooms. Beside of the legacy homemade control system handling the original installation, Epics was chosen as the basic framework for these projects. First, some control system components were used during preliminary beam tests. In parallel, the whole architecture was designed while the organization for future operation started to be considered; also, more structured and sophisticated tools were developed and the first high level applications for the whole machine tuning started to be tested, jointly with the current onsite beam commissioning. Progression of the control system development is presented, from the first beam tests up to the whole Spiral2 commissioning. Then, according to the new projects to cope with, some highlights are given concerning the related organization as well as specific items and developments to be considered, taking benefit from the Spiral2 control system feedback experience. OVERVIEW OF THE GANIL FACILITY... The Ganil (“Grand Accélérateur National d’Ions Lourds”) facility has quite yet a long history as the first beam was delivered to physicists in January 1983. It’s a heavy ions accelerator complex devoted to nuclear and atomic physics, astrophysics, material science and radiobiology. The original installation consisted of several cyclotrons in cascade for accelerating the beam and, in 2001, was enhanced by the Spiral (“Système de production d’Ions Radioactifs Accélérés en Ligne”) extension so that both stable and radioactive beams were able to be produced (see Figure 1). Figure 1: The Ganil facility. In order to extend to increase the range and quality of exotic nuclei to be delivered, the Spiral2 project was approved in May 2005 [1] and is presently within the commissioning phase [2]. It is based on a superconducting linac delivering up to 5 mA proton or deuteron beams or 1 mA q/a>1/3 ions beams. The project also includes the experimental rooms named S3 (“Super Separator Spectrometer”) and NFS (“Neutrons For Science”) and, as a continuation, the low energy RIB experimental hall DESIR (“Desintegration, Excitation and Storage of Radioactive Ions”). ... AND ITS CONTROL SYSTEMS As well as the machine itself, control systems strongly evaluate according with time and emerging technologies but always having to take into account the existing solutions. The initial control system was based on Camac serial loops and parallel branches handled by a minicomputer (specific language for programming) and local microprocessors (assembly language). In 1993, a major evolution replaced the Camac serial controllers by RTVAX/VaxELN CPUs linked through an Ethernet network integrating Vax/VMS machines. The Ada programming was used at every control system layer so all the software had to be rewritten while most of the hardware interfaces remained unchanged. In 1996, was introduced the VME standard with RTVAX/VaxELN CPUs then from 1998 by PowerPC/VxWorks CPUs, both still programmed in Ada. The last important evolution of the original Ganil installation control system was the migration from VMS servers to Linux ones in 2003. After two generations for the hardware servers organised as a cluster group, the last migration consisted this year of setting the servers into virtualized machines (Proxmox solution). When the Spiral2 project started, many reflexions were carried out for the solution to be considered for the control system to be provided, so provoking many and strong debates. Even if the Ganil control system was functioning pretty well in a robust way, it was decided in 2006 to base the future control system upon a solution widely used among many laboratories, so allowing sharing developments and solutions and being within an opened environment. Epics was therefore chosen to be the basic framework for the control system. Is was decided nevertheless that the future Spiral2 control system would share the same central servers as the original installation control one; the VME standard was kept both for having the same hardware solution and minimizing human resources for implementation. At the same time, the aim was to ease the 16th Int. Conf. on Accelerator and Large Experimental Control Systems ICALEPCS2017, Barcelona, Spain JACoW Publishing ISBN: 978-3-95450-193-9 doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUPHA016 TUPHA016 406 Co nt en tf ro m th is w or k m ay be us ed un de rt he te rm so ft he CC BY 3. 0 lic en ce (© 20 17 ). A ny di str ib ut io n of th is w or k m us tm ai nt ai n at tri bu tio n to th e au th or (s ), tit le of th e w or k, pu bl ish er ,a nd D O I. Control Systems Upgrades possibilities for collaborations with other laboratories for providing the control system: so, collaborations with CEA/Irfu at Saclay and CNRS/IPHC at Strasbourg were established within this framework. THE ORIGINAL INSTALLATION