Control of KEKB vacuum system

In a vacuum system of the KEKB accelerator that is a two ring electron-positron collider, there are nearly 10,000 control points. A large number of vacuum related components should be controlled and/or monitored at the rings and the beam transport line from the linac. Those component hardwares are connected to their sub-interfaces such as ADC interfaced by devices of CAMAC, RS-232C, GP-IB, and programmable logic controller (PLC) via GP-IB. The all device interfaces are controlled with newly developed softwares based on EPICS (experimental physics industrial control system) and single board equipment control computers through a high speed network using a UNIX-based workstation with X-terminals or emulators as operator consoles. The control points of the hardware for the vacuum system have been successfully implemented for monitor, control and data acquisition after the commissioning for 8 months utilizing EPICS software. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.