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| Peter Clout (right) receiving award from Richard
Kouzes |
Peter
Clout, the Founder and President of Vista Control Systems, Inc.
received the 2007 Computer Applications in Nuclear & Plasma
Sciences Award which was presented at the Real Time Conference dinner
last May by Dick Kouzes. The citation for the Award was For sustained
and innovative entrepreneurship in computerized data acquisition
and control systems.
Peter’s career has been as a technical interpreter –
interpreting between the language of physicists, molecular biologists,
and engineers and the language of computers and computing in order
to bring successful real-time computing systems to bear on experiments,
projects, test cells and production plants of all kinds.
Peter started his programming career before going to college working
for nine months in 1962 for English Electric in London. After graduating
with a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of
London in 1965, Peter moved to York and the newly-established Physics
Department to study for his D.Phil in Atomic Physics. After receiving
his D.Phil in 1969, Peter stayed on as a Postdoc to build new experiments
to be controlled by computer. All the hardware interfaces and the
software was built and developed by Peter and in addition, to provide
a virtual machine environment, he modified the computer hardware
(which was possible with a wire-wrap gun then!).
In 1972 Peter moved to Daresbury Laboratory near Liverpool where
he was responsible for data acquisition systems for Synchrotron
Radiation based research. He implemented a system based on CAMAC,
Honeywell 316 computers and a fast, parallel data link to an IBM
Mainframe computer. He also acted as Deputy Group Leader and assisted
the Group Leader in the management of the group and especially in
the development of CAMAC standards and modules, developing and writing
part of the Serial LAMGrader recommendation for ESONE. He also organized
exhibits of CAMAC at conferences and commercial exhibitions.
In 1977 Peter moved to Hamburg, Germany to work at the European
Molecular Biology Laboratory Synchrotron Radiation Outstation at
DESY. There he was responsible for establishing a data acquisition
system for the experiments at the outstation. The system established
was very successful and continued in use for many years. It was
based on CAMAC LSI-11 controllers running a real-time Basic-like
language and a serial highway connection to a PDP 11/45 acting as
the server and analysis computer. At this time Peter was also working
on and was latterly chair of the Subroutines for CAMAC ESONE working
group.
In 1980 Peter moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory where he was
responsible for the hardware and software for the control system
for the Proton Storage Ring project (1980-1986). This system used
graphics and commercial products in an innovative way in the age
before windowing graphics. In addition, the software for the project
was developed with an architecture that isolated functions into
processes. This software modularity ensured that development schedules
were adhered to and the PSR stored first beam on schedule. Individual
software modules could be tested independently then integrated with
minimal further bugs. The architecture was copied for a military
battlefield simulation system, but this time on networked Cray computers!
The PSR control system cost was 8% of the project cost, the lowest
monitored in a CERN survey of the time which found a range of 8-25%.
The system was based on CAMAC, multiple CAMAC Serial Highways for
computer communication and CAMAC access with a VAX computer running
VMS for the primary computer and CAMAC-mounted LSI 11/73 computers
running RSX-11S for the CAMAC controllers. One German research laboratory,
KFA, copied this control system.
Peter was one of the small group that recognized that the Particle
Accelerator Conference then did not then provide the right forum
for the accelerator controls people to meet, present their work
and discuss it. To address this the group in Los Alamos organized
the Accelerator Controls Workshop in Los Alamos in October 1985
which he chaired. This then inspired a conference series (ICALEPCS)
that has been important in developing the controls community for
large experimental physics machines ever since.
In the final battle of the Cold War, SDI, Peter was responsible
for the Telescope Control System of the Ground Test Accelerator
project (1986-1988) This project was considerably smaller than the
Proton Storage Ring and the system was developed and fielded in
less than a year. With such a short time to deliver a control system,
the obvious approach would have been to copy the previous system;
however, windowing workstations and routine computer networking
had become available, and so it was decided to re-design and develop
anew the software of the system based on the same overall concepts
of the Proton Storage Ring control system. Out of this project came
the basis for Vista Control Systems’ products and over 20
Laboratories took copies and half of these developed systems based
on the Telescope Control System. The system was based on CAMAC,
a CAMAC Serial Highway and a VAXstation II/GPX running VMS. This
system was also on-time and distinctly contributed to the success
of the Telescope experiment including the testing of control strategies
and algorithms both against the physics models and the actual beam
in the telescope.
At this same time, Peter was also responsible as Project Leader
for the Ground Test Accelerator Control System (1987–1989)
The GTA control system was based on a modification of a commercial
product used by another group and became EPICS. Peter’s role
here was political (open-warfare management - do not press this
button unless you have some time to spare!) rather than technical.
In 1988 it was increasingly clear that the political situation in
the Division where he worked in Los Alamos was untenable and, on
the other hand, there was excellent acceptance of the Telescope
Control System externally. From this the plans to form a company
and license the software developed and in 1989 Peter founded and
led the company. He is the primary sales person for the product,
Vsystem. Vista Control Systems sells a software kit for building
control and SCADA systems for research, military, utilities and
Industry. Plants that use Vsystem process a major fraction of the
steel and aluminum made in North America, producing many tens of
billions of dollars of finished product per year as well as creating
the basic feed-stock for the plastics industry. In addition, research
groups that use Vsystem are successful with much lower staff costs
than groups using noncommercial software.
Peter has held many positions in NPSS and TAB including NPSS President
(1995-6). Since 2001 he has been the Chairman of the NPSS Communications
Committee responsible for providing the promotional material for
our Society activities and membership including a membership booth.
In addition, along with a colleague at Vista Control Systems, he
is responsible for shipping literature and the booth to meetings
and arranging the annual membership mailing ahead of the IEEE membership
renewal drive.
The major lessons learned by Peter are:
• It is infinitely more likely that one has too little data
to solve a problem rather than too much.
• There are many fascinating problems waiting to be solved
in industry and for some of them the managers recognize that they
need addressing!
• One should sometimes let go of security and explore!
See Jean-Pierre Martin’s article about the CANPS technical
committee and Real Time Conference for Peter’s citation.
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