REALIZATION OF A CUSTOM DESIGNED FPGA BASED EMBEDDED CONTROLLER

As part of the Low Level RF (LLRF) upgrade project at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Collider- Accelerator Department (BNL C-AD), we have recently developed and tested a prototype high performance embedded controller. This controller is a custom designed PMC module employing a Xilinx V4FX60 FPGA with a PowerPC405 embedded processor, and a wide variety of on board peripherals (DDR2 SDRAM, FLASH, Ethernet, PCI, multi-gigabit serial transceivers, etc.). The controller is capable of running either an embedded version of LINUX or VxWorks, the standard operating system for RHIC front end computers (FECs). We have successfully demonstrated functionality of this controller as a standard RHIC FEC and tested all on board peripherals. We now have the ability to develop complex, custom digital controllers within the framework of the standard RHIC control system infrastructure. This paper will describe various aspects of this development effort, including the basic hardware, functional capabilities, the development environment, kernel and system integration, and plans for further development.