Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Michael Davidsaver via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> · Thu, 3 Sep 2020 10:13:58 -0700

On 9/3/20 3:01 AM, Frank, William (STFC,RAL,ISIS) wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> 
> I've come across MRF but haven't had any experience with it, it looks to be a well-established system in the EPICS community.
> 
> At the moment we're not looking to replace our existing timing/trigger system (a copper based 200 kHz RS-422 fan-out) but ideally 
> would like to time-stamp the acquisition triggers to be able to correlate the data from distributed DAQ units for post-mortem/offline analysis. 
> Any experience we have here may however influence our decisions if we revisit the timing/event system in future.

Understandable.  Any new system will require investment.  eg. getting
the most out of PTP/white rabbit may entail buying some new switches,
and replacing some NICs.  Supporting network hardware is what really
separates PTP from NTP in terms of performance.

With the MRF system there is the cost of crates, cards, and setup.
Depending on your existing cabling plant, there is also the cost of
added fiber.

> Cheers,
> Will
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Davidsaver <mdavidsaver at gmail.com> 
> Sent: 31 August 2020 06:29
> To: Frank, William (STFC,RAL,ISIS) <william.frank at stfc.ac.uk>
> Cc: tech-talk at aps.anl.gov
> Subject: Re: PTP hardware timestamps in EPICS facilities
> 
> I can't speak for the applicability of PTP.  I can speak for the MRF event timing hardware, and event timing in general, which are in wide use at accelerator facilities (including DLS).  These systems provide both trigger distribution and timestamping over a dedicated fiber optic network.
> 
> http://mrf.fi/
> 
> An EPICS driver (which I'm involved with)
> 
> http://epics.sourceforge.net/mrfioc2/
> 
> 
> 
> On 8/28/20 7:24 AM, Frank, William (STFC, RAL, ISIS) via Tech-talk wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>  
>>
>> I'm working on a replacement distributed DAQ system for our accelerators at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source in the UK.
>>
>>  
>>
>> As part of this we are investigating hardware time-stamping (on acquisition trigger) in order to correlate the stored data from different systems offline. This has led us to look at PTPv2 (IEEE-1588-2008) and PTPv2.1 (IEEE-1588-2019), better known as White Rabbit.
>>
>>  
>>
>> Our accelerator control system is built on Vsystem from Vista Control Systems but we are in the very early stages of evaluating a potential migration to EPICS.
>>
>>  
>>
>> My question is whether anyone here knows of any other facilities (existing or planned) that use PTP hardware timestamping within an EPICS facility? An initial review has led me to ITER (PTPv2 and EPICS), the work done by Seven Solutions on the Low Level RF controller for IFMIF/EVED (White Rabbit and EPICS) and D-TACQ Solutions who provide White Rabbit enabled DAQ boards with EPICS on-board. If anyone is aware of any others then please let me know as we are interested in future discussion and/or collaboration opportunities.
>>
>>  
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Will
>>
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> 

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System