2 research outputs found
Quality Control, Testing and Deployment Results in NIF ICCS
The strategy used to develop the NIF Integrated Computer Control System
(ICCS) calls for incremental cycles of construction and formal test to deliver
a total of 1 million lines of code. Each incremental release takes four to six
months to implement specific functionality and culminates when offline tests
conducted in the ICCS Integration and Test Facility verify functional,
performance, and interface requirements. Tests are then repeated on line to
confirm integrated operation in dedicated laser laboratories or ultimately in
the NIF. Test incidents along with other change requests are recorded and
tracked to closure by the software change control board (SCCB). Annual
independent audits advise management on software process improvements.
Extensive experience has been gained by integrating controls in the prototype
laser preamplifier laboratory. The control system installed in the preamplifier
lab contains five of the ten planned supervisory subsystems and seven of
sixteen planned front-end processors (FEPs). Beam alignment, timing, diagnosis
and laser pulse amplification up to 20 joules was tested through an automated
series of shots. Other laboratories have provided integrated testing of six
additional FEPs. Process measurements including earned-value, product size, and
defect densities provide software project controls and generate confidence that
the control system will be successfully deployed.Comment: Submitted to ICALEPCS 200
The Overview of the National Ignition Facility Distributed Computer Control System
The Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) for the National Ignition
Facility (NIF) is a layered architecture of 300 front-end processors (FEP)
coordinated by supervisor subsystems including automatic beam alignment and
wavefront control, laser and target diagnostics, pulse power, and shot control
timed to 30 ps. FEP computers incorporate either VxWorks on PowerPC or Solaris
on UltraSPARC processors that interface to over 45,000 control points attached
to VME-bus or PCI-bus crates respectively. Typical devices are stepping motors,
transient digitizers, calorimeters, and photodiodes. The front-end layer is
divided into another segment comprised of an additional 14,000 control points
for industrial controls including vacuum, argon, synthetic air, and safety
interlocks implemented with Allen-Bradley programmable logic controllers
(PLCs). The computer network is augmented asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) that
delivers video streams from 500 sensor cameras monitoring the 192 laser beams
to operator workstations. Software is based on an object-oriented framework
using CORBA distribution that incorporates services for archiving, machine
configuration, graphical user interface, monitoring, event logging, scripting,
alert management, and access control. Software coding using a mixed language
environment of Ada95 and Java is one-third complete at over 300 thousand source
lines. Control system installation is currently under way for the first 8
beams, with project completion scheduled for 2008.Comment: submitted to ICALEPCS 2001, TUAP00