Getting acquainted with the CODAC toolkit

There was a definite classroom atmosphere last week in meeting room 519/110, as young engineers from the Indian and Korean Domestic Agencies, along with staff from a Chinese company involved in the ITER coil power supply, were getting acquainted with the CODAC Core System, the software toolkit supplied by the ITER Organization for creating plant system instrumentation and control (I&C).

As hands were politely raised, instructors went from one student to the other explaining functions and detailing the software's options. The ten students who participated in this four-day training session will soon be using the software "for real" as they will all be directly involved in the procurement of I&C equipment for the ITER plant systems.

 

The CODAC Core System is a software package that is made available to all users who contribute to the development of the various ITER instrumentation and control systems. It is based on the widely-used EPICS open-source software—a favourite among large research installations such as the Korean tokamak KSTAR, the German synchrotron DESY and the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US.

 

Also included in the package (and in the training program) are ITER-developed configuration tools and software components to support hardware standards.

 

In order to make the training as realistic as possible the students' laptops were connected to the technical room one floor below, where electronic controllers and "looped signals" mimicked the behaviour of actual I&C equipment.

 

Training sessions began in 2011 and will be organized on a monthly basis throughout the coming years. Franck Di Maio, the CODAC Core System integrator and session organizer, expects to train 70 to 80 people from the ITER Domestic Agencies and industry this year.