Computer Applications in Nuclear and Plasma Science Technical Committee

The main event of the CANPS this year will be the 15th occurrence of the IEEE NPSS Real Time Conference. It will be held at Fermilab, from April 29th to May 4th, 2007. Margaret Votava, member of the FNAL computing division, is the general chairperson of the conference (http://computing.fnal.gov/cd/rt07/). Several adaptations of this conference are foreseen for the 2007 edition. In addition to the traditional Plasma, Particle and Nuclear Physics real time aspects, we want to promote new fields. For example, biomedical imaging real time data acquisition and processing is becoming a real challenge for the future. There were already a few presentations in this field at the RT2003 and RT2005 conferences, and the synergy with our traditional activities was greatly appreciated. Also, the decision to build ITER, the next generation of experimental fusion reactors, will generate new challenges in real time control systems. These two examples show how rich and exciting the Real Time field will be in the near future.
At the opening of the conference, on Sunday, April 29th, there will be a one-day workshop on ATCA. The workshop is planned to explore the merits of the Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) for use by the real-time science community. Our goal is to provide information that will assist attendees in making design decisions about utilizing ATCA hardware and associated software to achieve high availability in large projects like the ILC. The morning session consists of two tutorials on ATCA hardware and software offered by experts in the telecommunications field. The afternoon will include example projects from the NPSS community, a panel discussion of ATCA suitability and alternatives, and a questions and answer period with informal demos.
Due to the small size of the conference (~200 participants), and the broad diversity of Real Time applications covered, the RT conference is the ideal forum for studying the impact of new industrial standards such as ATCA, just as it has been in the past for NIM, CAMAC, FASTBUS and VME.
Jean-Pierre Martin, chair of the Computer Applications in Nuclear and Plasma Science Technical Committee, can be reached at the University of Montreal, RJA Lévesque Laboratory, Montreal (QC), Canada H3C 3J7. Phone +1 514 343 7340; E-mail: jpmartin@lps.umontreal.ca.