Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Matthias Clausen DESY -MKS-2/KRYK- <[email protected]> · Wed, 13 May 1998 15:22:56 +0200 (MET-DST)

	A new hardware platform runs EPICS IOC...

GPFC, a General Purpose Fieldbus Controller, jointly designed
by IHEP (Protvino) and DESY (Hamburg), is now powered with the
EPICS IOC software.

GPFC is a compact 3U-sized SBC (Single Board Computer) carrying 
2x IndustryPack modules. It's basic computing resources are 
Motorola's ColdFire MCF5206 RISC CPU, 4 MB DRAM and upto 1MB EPROM.
The primary I/O resource is the IP (IndustryPack) interface,
which enables GPFC to be configured with different types of
communication and direct digital/analog I/O modules. 
GPFC is designed for low power embedded control applications,
including (but not limited to) fieldbuses, and runs VxWorks 
real-time operating system from WindRiver (other real-time 
kernels can be ported as well). 
See http://www.desy.de/~zel/GPFC/ for more details about GPFC.

Using GPFC as an EPICS IOC node, one can extend high level controls
beyond the traditional VME environment. GPFC can be installed where
VME can not (space and/or power dissipation limitations, restricted
human access), and besides, GPFC is a relatively cheap device.

Release information:
-- VxWorks 5.3 (ColdFire 5206 BSP 1.1/0),
-- EPICS IOC R3.13.

First test were carried out running a database with soft-records.
Since the CDI (common driver interface) is already ported to the 
GFPC platform including the underlaying drivers for CAN, a GPFC-IOC
with CAN support will soon be available.

[GPFC availability... ???]

Please, contact 
	Matthias Clausen ([email protected]) and
	Serguei Zelepoukine ([email protected]) 
for more information.

__________________________________________________________________

p.s.
The Coldfire BSP from WindRiver will be available in fall this year.
The GNU compiler shall also be available by that time.
( no later than end of the year)

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System