The New Vacuum Control System of the CERN PS Complex

Richard Gavaggio, Pierre Strubin
CERN

Between 1992 and 1995, a new vacuum control system has been installed step-by-step on the different accelerators of the CERN PS complex (Linac2, Linac3, PS Booster and PS) as well as on the related beam transfer lines. This project has been carried out in parallel with the installation of the new main control system of the CERN PS accelerators. The initial goal was, on one hand, to rejuvenate old equipment using a technology which was badly adapted to the new control methods, and, on the other hand, for obvious compatibility and maintenance reasons, to standardise the hardware and software parts of these different systems. The hardware architecture has two different levels which fit very well to our needs of distributed control; a maximum of standardised and industrial equipment (VME and G64 boards and crates, RS232 and X25 field buses, ...) is used. The software part is structured in two layers to obtain a standard interface of all vacuum equipment for each of the different accelerators. This presentation describes the hardware and software architecture of this project as well as the different equipment used.