Status of the FASTBUS Standard Data Bus

FASTBUS is a new laboratory standard data bus intended for use in experimental data acquisition and control. The development of FASTBUS began with a feasibility study in 1976 and is presently at the development prototyping stage. The principal aims of the standard are to provide a factor of ten or more improvement in speed of data transfers over present systems, as well as to provide an architecture for systems containing multiple processors. Developmental prototypes now in progress include crates, backplanes, cooling devices, power supplies, test and diagnostic modules, and user modules. A sizeable software development effort is also underway. Several experiments have made commitments to use FASTBUS. A review of current work and potential applications is given.