masterFIP
WorldFIP is a
fieldbus widely used at CERN; there are more than 10’000 WorldFIP nodes
installed all around the LHC.
WorldFIP is used to connect critical sensors and actuators (by equipment
groups like Power Converters, Cryogenics, Beam Instrumentation etc) with
the control and supervision level.
The WorldFIP nodes are radiation-tolerant and are installed close the
LHC magnets. The WorldFIP masters are always installed in radiation safe
zones. One master is managing typically around 50 nodes.
The signal of the bus is 5V differential.
At CERN we used to purchase the WorldFIP masters and the nodes by the
company Alstom. However Alstom has been
gradually stopping all the WorldFIP support, as new Ethernet based
solutions are now dominant.
At CERN though we need to provide WorldFIP support until at least 2035,
the end-of-life of the HL-LHC as it would be very costly to change all
the cabling and the equipment to another Ethernet-based solution.
The fact that there is no more WorldFIP support by Alstom is the main
reason we need to design and support our own WorldFIP equipment at CERN.
The masterFIP board, is a WorldFIP master, the replacement of the Alstom
WorldFIP master board. It is an FMC
mezzanine, to be
combined with a SPEC PCI
Express carrier.
The project is divided into four sub-projects:
- Hardware : Mezzanine board schematic and layout
- Gateware : HDL design with Mock Turtle
- Software : Bare-metal C code running in the FPGA-embedded Mock Turtle CPUs, library and tools.
- Testing : Production and functional tests.
Please refer to the corresponding sub-project for detailed information.
Project Status
Date | Event |
07-2014 | Evaluation of needs and of the available solutions; definition of the work packages |
12-2014 | MasterFIP functional specification ready |
06-2015 | Working hard on driver development and gateware for the masterFIP. |
10-2015 | First firmware commit using the Mock Turtle core; basic communication with nanoFIP and microFIP agents |
01-2016 | Starting of collaboration with Creotech for the PTS |
05-2016 | Solved well-hidden bug in GN4124-core that was crashing the masterFIP applications when 2 boards were installed in a Kontron PCI762 |
07-2016 | 1-month runs with Cryo lab equipment run smoothly and the migration to masterFIP was transparent to the cryo users! |
08-2016 | Creotech delivers PTS |
09-2016 | Successful migration of the RadMon application to the masterFIP |
10-2016 | Hardware V2 ready for review |
11-2016 | Startup of collaboration with QPS for the migration of their application |
01-2017 | Hardware V3 ready for production; no ADC diagnostics on the board based on high production and maintenance costs |
Documents
- Work Packages
- Functional Specification
- Developers' wikis (CERN only)
Contacts
Erik van der Bij | Eva Gousiou | Michel Arruat | Julien Palluel
E.Gousiou, E.Van der Bij, 27 February 2017