A "Universal Time" system for ASDEX Upgrade

For the new generation of intelligent controllers for plasma diagnostics, discharge control and long-pulse experiment control a new time system supporting steady state real-time operation has been devised. A central unit counts time at nanosecond resolution, covering more than the experiment lifetime. The broadcast time information serves local units to perform application functions such as current time readout, trigger generation and sample time measurement. Time is treated as a precisely measured quantity like other physical quantities. Tagging all detected events and sampled values with measured times as [value; time]-entities facilitates real-time data analysis, steady state protocolling and time-sorted archiving.