Suggested Principles for the Control of Future Accelerators

The SPS at CERN has a control system which incorporates a number of features which were novel at the time of its design 1). This system has been in use for the commissioning and operation of the accelerator and its experimental areas over the last three years, during which time considerable experience has been gained, and some modifications and changes have been made 2). Some of the principles have been adopted for subsequent control systems for accelerators and other processes, with various modifications to suit the particular circumstances. The purpose of this paper is to combine this experience with the predicted trends in microprocessor electronics to suggest a direction in which the design of control systems for large processes of this type may go. We will start with a brief description of the main features of the present system.