Same device on multiple IOCs

[Rea Domitrović via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

Hi all,

we're currently reworking our control system, and we have some situations where the same device might need to be controlled by multiple IOCs. One situation is an S7 PLC controller which controls a whole bunch (ion sources, beam focusing, terminal voltage), and we wish to separate its function into multiple IOCs for modularity. Another is a StreamDevice (i.e. Asyn IP) multiplexer with multiple output streams, each output stream dedicated to one accelerator. My questions:

1. Are software ports created by one IOC exposed to other IOCs? So for example if I make Asyn IP port Mux0 in one IOC, does writing to that port from a different IOC work?
2. Is it possible to control the same device from multiple IOCs, and what is the recommended way to do so? If 1 is True, then I was thinking of making a "holding" IOC which only exposes all the ports to which then the IOCs containing records can write.

Best regards,

Rea Domitrović

Institut Ruđer Bošković