Implementation of an FPGA based system survey and diagnostic reader with the aim to increase system dependability

The operation and machine protection of accelerators practically rely on their underlying instrumentation systems and a failure of any of those systems could pose a significant impact on the overall reliability and availability. In order to improve the detection and in some cases the prevention of failures, a survey mechanism could be integrated to the system that collects crucial information about the current system status through a number of acquisition modules. The implementation and integration of such a method is presented with the aim to standardize the implementation, where the acquisition modules share a common build and are connected through a standardized interface to a survey reader. The reader collects regularly data and controls the readout intervals. The information collected from these modules is used locally in the FPGA device to identify critical system failures and results in an immediate failsafe reaction with the data also transmitted and stored in external databases for offline analysis.