The control system for the Fermilab accelerators

The five cascading accelerators which together provide the protons and anti-protons for the Fermilab Tevatron fixed target and colliding beams experimental program are controlled using a flexible, yet operationally unified, control system. The system, now functional, has been developed in a somewhat evolutionary fashion over the last six years. The present system, which includes over 1000 microprocessors, is characterized by a very extensive use of distributed parallel processing, as well as global access to readings and control points by users at twenty identical consoles. Significant design effort was expended to insure rapid parallel access to all data by any console user, whether machine operator or system specialist. A clock system synchronized to various important machine frequencies is used to schedule the operation of the accelerator