Minutes of the ISAC'97 (Europe) Meeting, ESO, Garching,
6th Sept.96

Participants: G.Baribaud (CERN), Th.Blumer(PSI), W.Busse (HMI), M.Clausen (DESY), A.Daneels (CERN), R.Rausch (CERN), T.Katoh (KEK),T.Luong (GANIL), R.Pose (JINR), G.Raffi (ESO), R.Steiner (GSI).

Distribution list: ISAC-Eur, ICALEPCS'97 Secretariat,P.Clout (ISAC-AM), S.Dasgupta (VECC), T.Katoh (KEK), B.Sinha (VECC)

1. Welcome Address:

• Gianni Raffi (ESO) welcomes allparticipants.

2. ICALEPCS'97 : Status report

- Conferencedate

• ICALEPCS'97 will be held atIHEP, Beijing, 3 - 7 Nov. 1997. Note that this date is constrained by theyearly US-PRC Joint Committee Meeting in the 2nd half of Oct.

- Conference chair,

• ICALEPCS'97 will be chairedjointly by Prof. Zhipeng Zheng (Dir. of IHEP) and Axel Daneels (CERN).

- ISAC

• ISAC Members: out of the 43who were invited, 42 accepted (see list). The geographical distribution is asfollows: Africa= 2; America= 12 (U.S.= 11; CDN = 1), Asia= 12, Europe: 16(East: 3; West : 13).

- Local OrganizingCommittee

• Co-chair: Prof. Shuhong Wang,Prof. Jijiu Zhao (both IHEP)

- Sponsors

The following learnedSocieties agree to sponsor the conference:

• - Chinese Physical Society (CPS)
• - Chinese Automation Society (CAS)
• - High Energy Physics Society of China (HEPSC)
• - Particle Accelerator Society of China (PASC)
• - International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC)
• - Asian Committee for future Accelerators (ACFA)
• - IEEE/Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS)
• - Association of the Asian Pacific Physical Societies (AAPPS): is beingcontacted.
• - European Physical Society (EPS): is about to be O.K.

- Funding

• The State Science andTechnology Commission of China agrees to fund the conference. The first funds have been received from IHEP to start the organization;efforts are being made to get more (see next §). IHEP will make up thebalance in case of need.

- Financial support for participants from developing countries

• IHEP will support the local expenses for 20 to 30 participants from developingcountries. However, the ISAC-Eur felt that the major problem will be thetravel expenses. The ISAC-Eur suggests that part of the conference fee coversome travel expenses. --> Action ICALEPCS'97 Local Organizing Committee
• Support from UNESCO is beingsollicited, but experience shows that this is in general very limited = ~ 1000USD
• R.Pose (JINR) will contact the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Science forsupporting the travel expenses of the russian participants: this Foundationexpects a letter from the conference organisers indicating that they willendorse the local expenses. ---> Action Prof. Zhipeng Zheng (Dir. of IHEP)

- Industrial Exhibit

Todate the following companieshave been invited:

• - DEC : promised toattend and to give some financial support
• - Motorola, Windriver, IMAG, Legend, etc.: however no committment can beexpected until spring / summer 1997

Others will be invited: e.g.HP, Intel, IBM, etc.

- Varia

• - ICALEPCS'97 homepage on W3: under development by Lei Ge (IHEP)
• - budget plan: in progress (will be communicated to ISAC for information)
• - the first announcement should be sent out after the ISAC meeting at KEK (cf.next §)
• - Preparatory ISAC meetings
• - ISAC'97 (Europe):6 Sept 1996, ESO (Garching, DE)
• - ISAC'97 (America): Oct 1996 (?)
• - ISAC'97 Plenary: 11-15 Nov 1996, KEK (Tsukuba, JN)

3. Related event: Intl. Workshop on Control System for Super ConductingCyclotrons (C3S2)

- General

• This workshop will beorganised by VECC (Dir.: Prof. Bikash Sinha ) in view of their SuperConducting Cyclotron project; it will be held in Jaipur, the week before orafter ICALEPCS'97.
• The ISAC-Eur feels that the week after ICALEPCS'97 is more approriate.

- Preparatorymeeting

The C3S2 Scientific AdvisoryCommittee will meet at VECC (Calcutta), 18-20 Nov 1996 (i.e. week afterISAC'97 Plenary @ KEK)

• Host: Prof. Bikash Sinha
• Convener: Subrata Dasgupta
• Chairman: Axel Daneels
• Participants: Europe= WinfriedBusse (HMI), Axel Daneels (CERN), Serge Waeffler (CERN); replies are awaited from US and Japan.

4. ICALEPCS'99: call for candidates

• At the ISAC'97 meeting (KEK, Nov. 96)Europe should propose candidates for ICALECS'99 .
• Tam Luong will discuss with his Directorate

the possibility to hostICALEPCS'99 (jointly with Saclay)

• It was suggested that Portugal might be interested.

5. Back to ICALEPCS'97

- ICALEPCS'95(Chicago) post mortem

Positivepoints to preserve

• - the conference should be organised around a few selected (main) subjects
• - papers not focussing the main subjects should be presented as posters
• - status reports should be limited in number (only significant papers) and time
• - parallel sessions should be organised with "high cohesion" and "lowcoupling"
• - the number of parallel sessions should be limited: e.g. 2 to 3 days and onlyin the afternoon
• - all events (oral presentations, poster sessions, industrial exhibit, ...)should be at the same premises
• - papers should be W3-ready for publication on W3
• - papers should be published on W3, CD-ROM and paper (book)

Points to improve

• - longer breaks fordiscussions
• - someone should be nominated to be responsible for organizing each of themain subjects (Subject Responsible)
• - the Subject Responsible should also be responsible for the correspondingconference sessions
• - there should be more time for questions at the end of each presentation orat the end of a session
• - the Subject Responsible should prepare the session so as to triggerquestions and discussions from the audience at the end of each session
• - longer poster sessions: e.g. within a 4 days conference 2 x 2 days should beallowed for posters (the posters should stay for 2 days ???)
• - do not mix parallel sessions with poster sessions
• - the list of attendees should be available a.s.a.p.

- ICALEPCS'97

a. Main /Central Argument ICALEPCS'97 should focus on

The ISAC-Eur considered thefollowing 4 main subjects:

-Engineering

• - requirementengineering, development, reliability issues, re-engineering, maintenance,
• - methods, standards, tools
• - project management

- Technology(hardware and software)

- Industrial / off the shelve systems

• - evaluation andintegration of products

- Evolution ofcontrols in the years 2000:

• - evolution of the Standard Model, O/S, memories,

b. Session topics, related subjects and session organization

-Engineering

• - This sessionshould start with a Tutorial

Presentations on:

• - experience with appliying Engineering methods, e.g. case studies (cf. CERN,ESO, industry). How to apply Engineering, what effort does it involve, ...
• - methods, standards and tools: e.g. application of standards for both inhouse development or outsourcing
• - project management
• - testing (module test, integration tests, ...)
• - status of the SOftware SHaring (SOSH) initiative

- Technology(hardware and software)

• - fieldbusses
• - PLC
• - tools, e.g. for programming PLCs, ...
• - networking (ATM , ...)
• - JAVA
• - TCL/TK
• - application of W3 for process monitoring
• - distributed O.O. (CDEV, CORBA, ...)
• - overview of micro-controllers
• - hard real-time programming (cf. Int. Symposium on On-Board Real-TimeSoftware, ESTEC Noordwijk, 13-15 Nov. 95)
• - finite state machines (FSM)
• - databases

- Industrial / off the shelve systems (Evaluation / Integration)

• - method toevaluate different products: evaluating a product takes time; how can we findthe resources to compare different products ?
• - integration in a multi protocol network
• - integration of PLCs
• - integaration of inhomogeneous systems (e.g. Windows NT onto UNIX; Labviewonto UNIX; GPIB and non GPIB equipment, FactoryLink, ...)

- Evolution ofcontrols in the years 2000:

• - evolution of theStandard Model: how to make it more adaptable so as to integrate old but stilluseful designs
• - evolution of the components: computers, networks, O/S, memories, ...
• - what are the limits of semiconductor technology
• - critical issues for which we hope for significant improvement (i.e. with asignificant impact on future controls)
• - evolution of operational requirements: more automatic sequencing of operations, automatic feedbacks, history of operation sequences, replay incase of problems, ...

c. Sessionorganizers - to take responsibility , Invited speakers and topics

• For each main subject theISAC-Eur suggests a Session Organiser to take up responsibilty in organising the sessionon that subject (suggesting detailed topics, speakers, etc..) and in chairingthat session at the conference.
• For some topics an invited speaker has been suggested.

-Engineering :

CandidateSession Organiser: Guy Baribaud (CERN) + Gianni Raffi (ESO)

- Technology :

CandidateSession Organiser: Winfried Busse (HMI) + Rudolf Steiner (GSI)

- Industrial systems:

CandidateSession Organiser: Raymond Rausch (CERN), Tam Luong (GANIL), Tadahiko Katoh(KEK)

- Evolution of controls in the years 2000:

Candidate Session Organiser: Matthias Clausen (DESY) + Thomas Blumer(PSI)

It was suggested tocontact the manufacturers, DEC, INTEL, ... for the following topics:

• - evolution of thecomponents: computers, networks, O/S, memories, ...
• - what are the limits of semiconductor technology
• - critical issues for which we hope for significant improvement (i.e. with asignificant impact on future controls)

d. Possible workshops, Tutorials, Panel discussion, Training courses

- tutorials :

• - engineering:
• - JAVA

- panel discussion:

• - beyond the standard model

- workshop :

• - engineering:suggested by Sacha Sytin (IHEP-Protvino) not at the ISAC-Eur meeting
• - fieldbusses (the 3 recommended ones)
• - Operation's point of view

e. Generalorganization of the sessions at the meeting (Parallel/serial, what subjects will be confronted against each other, etc.)

Cf. Chapter on ICALEPCS'95:Positive points to preserve and Points to improve

f. Candidates for closing remarks

The ISAC-Eur felt that the closing remarks should be made by one of the moresenior asian (preferably chinese) participants.

However, for the dinner talk one could think of e.g Klaus Muller, now retiredfrom KFA (Jülich, DE).

g. Possible help (mailing , promotion in Europe, North America etc): e.g. handling ofabstracts , ...

The ISAC-Eur suggests that all abstracts be E-mailed to the ICALEPCS'97secretariat at IHEP in Beijing with copies to Axel Daneels (CERN) and to thechairman of the american ISAC: Peter Clout (Vista, NM, US) or Dave Gurd (LANL,NM, US) ??

Abstracts should be published on the W3 a.s.a.p.

--> Afterthoughts concerning this point (R.Rausch): Abstracts should bepublished on the W3 after ISAC has completed their selectionand has themorganised into appropriate chapters.

h. Selection criteria for papers: unpublished, ...

The ISAC-Eur strongly recommends that papers be selected for their quality:better fewer papers but good ones. In sofar that this is possible one shouldcheck whether the papers that are submitted have not yet been published insimilar conferences. Authors could be asked to sign a declaration along this line (as happens in otherconferences).

6. Status of ESO' s VLT Project

The meeting ended on a video on theprogress of the ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) project and a visit at ESO'scontrol room.

Please send your comments to

Songqing Lu sqlu@bepc3.ihep.ac.c n
Lei Ge leige@bepc17.ihep.ac.cn