Opportunist combination of electronic technologies for real time calculations in the Tore Supra tokamak

The Tore Supra tokamak real-time plasma control is based on measurements coming from various diagnostics. The complexity of all the events that occur during plasma is at the origin of measurements disturbances which have to be corrected in real time in order to ensure an optimal control. The signal correction does not just mean processing but requires complex algorithms. Electronics does not only need to process and adapt electrical signals, but it has to include corrections by mathematical calculation. The FPGA (field-programmable gate array) technology, with the help of basic adapted electronics, allows integrating the entire real time calculation and digital data transmission on the network. FMC (FPGA Mezzanine Card) coupled with in-house motherboard, which is used both as the interface with Tore Supra specific systems and as the support for other signals processing options, is the perfect answer to this request. The FMC includes a FPGA, memory, Ethernet port and multiple I/O for interfacing with the motherboard and Tore Supra signals. The algorithms are developed in VHDL (Very high speed integrated circuit Hardware Description Language), parallel process management that promotes faster calculation than a common μC (Micro-controller) in one clock pulse. The flexibility, the low cost and the implementation speed allow fitting a large number of various applications in fields where no “off-the-shelf” component can be found. And more specifically, in research and experimentation, algorithms can be continuously improved or modified for new requirements.