Control subsystem Five year plan Ralph Marson Rachel
Control subsystem Five year plan Ralph Marson, Rachel Rosen
Maintenance (Bug fixing) • Effort has been steadily reducing and it’s now consuming around 50% of our time. • Unclear if effort required will continue to diminish • Major activity is improving response to unexpected errors like hardware /network failures or unexpected user input. • Prevent a bad software response – like a crash • Improve the ability to restart with minimal intervention • Clearer error messages highlighting the underlying problem. • When appropriate continue the observation. • Do a better job of flagging bad data.
Maintenance (Code generation update) 1. Update the code generation frameworks • Existing framework (OAW) is no longer maintained 2. Control subsystem maintains a code generation framework to produce ASDM tables and hardware device base classes • Its also used to produce the APDM classes 3. ASDM classes (Test-bed project) • Plan to use the framework proposed by Michel. • UML diagrams will be replaced by XML documents • Michel is working on this (when he can) 4. Hardware Devices (do this second) • We edit excel (XML) spreadsheets using a text editor • Only manageable for small changes • Needs to be done prior to major new hardware changes
Maintenance (Tool update 1) Software tools are continually changing and we need to track them • Needed for newer computers • Offer efficiency and maintenance improvements 1. Operating system • Will move to Red. Hat 7 and then hopefully Red. Hat 8 2. Real-time operating system • Try to track changes in the non-real-time operating system • Implement ways to reduce our real-time footprint.
Maintenance (Tool update 2) 3. C++ • Currently using the 1998 standard. Need to update to 2011 and then the 2014 standard. 4. Java • Using Java 8. Java 9 was released last month. Like to never be more than a year or so behind. 5. Python • Unclear when we should need to move to Python 3 6. Testing platform • Considering replacing Jenkins with Bamboo (Atlassian) 7. No changes anticipated for version control (git) or bug tracking (JIRA)
Maintenance (Technical Debt) • Incurred during construction because of the conflicting demands to support testing (ATF , antenna integration or commissioning) and to produce the operational software. • Strategy is to overhaul modules when they need significant changes. • Modules or functions that are no longer needed are removed. • Perhaps 50% of the way through this activity (but you are never really done).
Improvements (Hardware changes) 1. ALMA Phasing Project (APP)updates • APP funding is continued to add a few improvements • Impact on control and correlator subsystems is not big 2. Total-power spectrometer • Impact on control subsystem is not big 3. New front-ends • Band 1. • • Work is in principle done. Band 2/Band 3 • Not funded for construction. PDR on 2017 -11 -29
Improvements (Correlator upgrade) 4. Correlator upgrade (resolution upgrade) • Funded for construction. • Impact on control subsystem is not big 5. Digital back-end (band-width upgrade) • Will double the bandwidth into the correlator. • Sample data as it comes out of the front-end (16 Gsamples/sec/side-band/polarization) • Almost complete change in the back-end electronics (new IF processor, LO 2’s, Digital transmission system). • Big change for the control system • Currently demonstrating that core technologies are viable.
Improvements (Astronomer GUI’s) 1. Quick look • Provide a view of the data after each scan completes • Provides graphical plots of calibration results • Numerous extensions are pending • Provide an “on the fly” image of the science target 2. Data GUI • Plot data as it comes out of either correlator or the total-power processor. • CORR GUI replace • Plot all baselines (not just 1). • Connects to bulk-data channel – plots can update within seconds of the data being collected.
Improvements (Operator GUI’s) 1. Observing conditions (new) • To help determine if the weather good enough for demanding projects • Will integrate and display • Temperature/pressure/humidity (from the weather stations) • PWV estimates (from Water Vapour Radiometers) • Phase stability estimates (from telcal) 2. Array GUI’s • Provide an assessment of the equipment in an array • Long list of improvements
Improvements (Engineering GUI’s) • One panel for each type of equipment • Primarily use by engineers for diagnosing equipment issues. • Not a lot of demand for this • Would frequently be used at an engineers desk. • Likely to need to be browser based.
Improvements (Misc) • Improving the relational SDM so that its more useful for other users • Continue to improve error handling • More automated responses to some error conditions • Better tools for displaying the underlying error • Improved tuning and locking algorithms for the photonic reference and front-end
Improvements (Misc) • Improving the relational SDM so that its more useful for other users • Continue to improve error handling • More automated responses to some error conditions • Better tools for displaying the underlying error • Improved tuning and locking algorithms for the photonic reference and front-end
- Slides: 13