The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System architecture: Past, present, and future

Abstract The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS), has been used at a number of sites for performing data acquisition, supervisory control, closed-loop control, sequential control, and operational optimization. The EPICS architecture was originally developed by a group with diverse backgrounds in physics and industrial control. The current architecture represents one instance of the “standard model”. It provides distributed processing and communication from any local area network (LAN) device to the front end controllers. This paper presents the current architecture, performance envelope, current installations, and planned extensions for requirements not met by the current architecture.