Intelligent Platform Management Controller for Low Level RF control system ATCA Carrier Board

High availability and reliability are among the most desirable features of control systems in modern High-Energy Physics (HEP) and other big-scale scientific experiments. One of the recent developments that has influenced this field was the emergence of the Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA). Designed for the telecommunications industry it has been successfully applied in other domains such as accelerator control systems. A good example is the application of ATCA standard for the design of Low Level RF (LLRF) control system for the X-Ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) being developed in Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY). Reliability and availability requirements for such a device play a crucial role among other parameters. Thus, the ATCA standard, with five-nines availability, is considered one of the best candidates for this system. This article focuses on the central management unit of every ATCA board, namely the Intelligent Platform Management Controller (IPMC), developed for the LLRF ATCA Carrier Board (CB). It also argues that it is possible to create a fully functional IPMC using base specifications only which is a much more economical solution than acquiring such products from various vendors dealing with ATCA-related products. The solution presented here fully complies with all the most recent revisions of specifications that are required for an ATCA board to properly operate in an ATCA shelf, communicate with the redundant Shelf Manager (ShM) and host Advanced Mezzanine Cards (AMCs). Full Electronic-Keying (EK) functionality is present on the LLRF CB supporting such protocols as PCI Express (PCIe), Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and proprietary Low Latency Links (LLL) making it possible to route connections between all the boards in the system. The IPMC solution presented here is mainly hardware independent as proper code organization allowed to separate low-level device drivers and high-level application logic dealing with the ATCA standa rd, which makes it portable to new carrier board designs.