NSTX-U Advances in Real-Time C++11 on Linux
- Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
Programming languages like C and Ada combined with proprietary embedded operating systems have dominated the real-time application space for decades. The new C++11standard includes native, language-level support for concurrency, a required feature for any nontrivial event-oriented real-time software. Threads, Locks, and Atomics now exist to provide the necessary tools to build the structures that make up the foundation of a complex real-time system. The National Spherical Torus Experiment Upgrade (NSTX-U) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is breaking new ground with the language as applied to the needs of fusion devices. A new Digital Coil Protection System (DCPS) will serve as the main protection mechanism for the magnetic coils, and it is written entirely in C++11 running on Concurrent Computer Corporation's real-time operating system, RedHawk Linux. It runs over 600 algorithms in a 5 kHz control loop that determine whether or not to shut down operations before physical damage occurs. To accomplish this, NSTX-U engineers developed software tools that do not currently exist elsewhere, including real-time atomic synchronization, real-time containers, and a real-time logging framework. Together with a recent (and carefully configured) version of the GCC compiler, these tools enable data acquisition, processing, and output using a conventional operating system to meet a hard real-time deadline (that is, missing one periodic is a failure) of 200 microseconds.
- Research Organization:
- Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-09CH11466
- OSTI ID:
- 1172639
- Report Number(s):
- PPPL-5046; TRN: US1500485
- Journal Information:
- IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, Vol. 62, Issue 4; Conference: 2014 IEEE-NPSS Real Time (RT) Conference, Nara (Japan), 26-30 May 2014; ISSN 0018-9499
- Publisher:
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
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