A computer control system for the PNC high power cw electron linac; Concept and hardware

Emoto, Takashi; Kato, Yuko*; Hirano, Koichiro  ; Ishikawa, Y.*; Takei, Hayanori   ; Nomura, Masahiro  ; Tani, Satoshi

Design and construction of a high power cw (Continuous Wave) electron linac for studying feasibility of nuclear waste transmutation was started in 1989 at PNC. The PNC accelerator (10Mev, 20mA average current, 4 ms pulse width, 50 Hz repetition) is dedicated machine for development of the high current acceleration technology in future need. The computer control system is responsible for accelerator control and supporting the experiment for high power operation. The feature of the system is the measurements of accelerator status simultaneously and modularity of software and hardware for easily implemented for modification or expansion. The high speed network (SCRAMNet15MB/s), Ethernet, and front end processors (Digital Signal Processor) were employed for the high speed data taking and control. The system was designed to be standard modules and software implemented man machine interface. Due to graphical-user-interface and object-oriented-programming, the software development environment is effortless programming and maintenance.