An FPGA Based Multiprocessing CPU for Beam Synchronous Timing in CERN's SPS and LHC

The Beam Synchronous Timing system (BST) will be used around the LHC and its injector, the SPS, to broadcast timing meassages and synchronize actions with the beam in different receivers. To achieve beam synchronization, the BST Master card encodes messages using the bunch clock, with a nominal value of 40.079 MHz for the LHC. These messages are produced by a set of tasks every revolution period, which is every 89 us for the LHC and every 23 us for the SPS, therefore imposing a hard real-time constraint on the system. To achieve determinism, the BST Master uses a dedicated CPU inside its main Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) featuring zero-delay hardware task switching and a reduced instruction set. This paper describes the BST Master card, stressing the main FPGA design, as well as the associated software, including the LynxOS driver and the tailor-made assembler.