Development of a real-time data archive system for a KSTAR real-time network

Abstract

This paper presents the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) Real-Time Data Archiving System (RTDAS) for a real-time network. In most fusion experiments, a stable and low latency real-time network is essential for achieving real-time controllability. Inspecting and supervising the operation of a real-time network is essential for ensuring its stability. Archiving the network data makes it possible to analyze the performance and status of a network. In the KSTAR, RTDAS has been developed to monitor and archive real-time network data that is used to control the plasma and send diagnostic data to Plasma Control System (PCS) in real-time to ensure the stable operation of the real-time network. The KSTAR adopts reflective memory (RFM) as a real-time network and this paper presents the algorithm of the real-time data archiving system and the experimental results of this system. The real-time data archiving system operates in two phases. During the experiment, the archiving system stores data from these real-time networks in real-time. After the experiment is finished the system sends this archived data to the MDSplus data server; this system stores all data in accordance with the KSTAR timing system. Therefore, all data is synchronized with the KSTAR timing system. This system is configured with Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) and Asynchronous Driver Support (AsynDriver). This system operates in real-time, was implemented on Messaging Realtime Grid -Real time (MRG-R) kernel 3.10, and uses Multi-Core Utilities (MCoreUtil). The system was tested to validate the performance of this archiving system; the test results show this system’s real-time performance.