Intelligent Platform Management Controller Software Architecture in ATCA Modules for Fast Control Systems

The Intelligent Platform Management Controller (IPMC) is one of the main elements for hardware management in an Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) crate. Hardware failure detection, redundancy procedures, and hot insertion/removal of the boards are tasks that ensure high availability to a control and data acquisition system. Therefore, the Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear of the Instituto Superior Técnico de Lisboa (IPFN/IST) decided to develop software to an IPMC sodimm module from CoreIPM and integrate it in the ATCA boards that are being developed. The objective is to include those boards in the instrumentation catalogue of the tokamak International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). This paper describes the architecture and the main tasks performed by the IPMC software module.