Software components of MTCA-based image acquisition system

The diagnostic and control systems of large scale scientific experiments like particle accelerators, colliders or fusion reactors are in most cases complex distributed installations. They consist of thousands of various components which exchange large amount of data. One of the most important element of each such an installation is a software system responsible for supervising its operation. Main tasks of the software are control and monitoring of all hardware components of the system. Developers of such applications should pay special attention to provide high-performance data transmission and processing. The software components should be also unified to facilitate the extension of the system. The paper presents the complete control system for the prototype Image Acquisition System (IAS) based on the extension of MTCA.4 architecture dedicated for physics experiments. The control system has been developed on the basis of Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS). It is aimed at providing a set of unified components for development of various types of image acquisition systems. The paper describes all parts making up the control system of the IAS, from the Linux device driver and intermediate API libraries to support library for development of EPICS-based control systems.