SPARTA for the VLT: status and plans

SPARTATM, the ESO Standard Platform for Adaptive optics Real Time Applications, is the real time computing platform serving 3 major 2nd generation instruments at the VLT (SPHERE, GALACSI and GRAAL) with plans to serve more, smaller, instruments in the near future. SPARTA offers a very modular and fine-grained architecture which is generic enough to serve a variety of AO systems. SPARTA includes the definitions of all the interfaces between those modules and provides libraries and tools to implement and test the various modules as well as a map to technologies capable of delivering the required performance, most of them innovative with respect to ESO standards in use. For the above mentioned instruments, SPARTA provides also a complete implementation of the AO application, with features customized for each of the 3 instruments. In this paper we present the architecture of SPARTA, its technologies, functions, performance and test tools as well as the plans to increase the reach of the platform to smaller system with what we call SPARTA Light.