Computer control of large accelerators, design concepts and methods

Unlike most of the specialities treated in this volume, control system design is still an art, not a science. This presentation is an attempt to produce a primer for prospective practitioners of this art.A large modern accelerator requires a comprehensive control system for commissioning, machine studies, and day‐to‐day operation. Faced with the requirement to design a control system for such a machine, the control system architect has a bewildering array of technical devices and techniques at his disposal, and it is our aim in the following chapters to lead him through the characteristics of the problems he will have to face and the practical alternatives available for solving them.We emphasize good system architecture using commercially available hardware and software components, but in addition we discuss the actual control strategies which are to be implemented, since it is at the point of deciding what facilities shall be available that the complexity of the control system and its cost are implicitly...