Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Pete Jemian <[email protected]> · Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:56:41 -0600

Jack:

You will hear from the accelerator folks on the details. The overview

is that some systems remain on legacy versions of EPICS base because

they depend on reliable, yet legacy hardware. With the impressive

uptime that the accelerator is run and the number of IOCs in deployment,

one can appreciate that a conservative approach to upgrades has been

adopted.

The X-ray beam lines (who are direct beneficiaries of the efforts of the

EPICS core team) that run EPICS (200 VxWorks IOCs, ca. 100 Linux IOCs,

perhaps a few RTEMS IOCs) are all on 3.14 versions. It is much easier

to apply upgrades at beam lines since they each independently and can be

upgraded on an individual basis.

Pete

On 11/21/2012 2:54 PM, Jack Smith wrote:

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for pointing out the new features in the Base 3.15.

I'm very surprised by the chart "Accelerator IOC EPICS Versions" in
your presentation: ~60% IOCs were using aged version 3.13 in March,
2011 and 25% in Sept. 2012. I always think that APS is the pioneer in
the EPICS base. But after seeing this chart, I think that APS is
pioneering in the base development rather than the deployment. Could
anyone share your experience and opinion why it is so difficult to
upgrade the legacy to the up-to-date?

Thanks,

Jack

--
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Pete R. Jemian, Ph.D.                <[email protected]>
Beam line Controls and Data Acquisition, Group Leader
Advanced Photon Source,   Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne, IL  60439                   630 - 252 - 3189
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   Education is the one thing for which people
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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System