User Documentation - 2014-10-20 18:24:36.834373
Open Hardware Opportunities and Innovative Electronics at
CERN
Electronics Design Show,
22nd - 23rd October 2014, Coventry, UK.
35 minute presentation
Before the presentation the four minute movie Knowledge and technology: from CERN to society was shown.
Abstract
Open Hardware Opportunities and Innovative Electronics at CERN
Erik van der Bij - CERN
CERN has a culture of innovation with evident links to economic, political, educational and social advances. Also in the field of electronics that is used to control the particle accelerators one can find this culture.
The most recent innovation is the advent of professional Open Hardware where electronics designs developed for CERN are made available to any company for production and sales with “no strings attached”. These developments often required support from industry and are based on bus standards such as FMC, PCI Express, PXI Express and VME, while the Wishbone specification is used as SoC bus. The CERN Open Hardware Licence that goes with those designs fosters a collaborative approach between research and industry and calls for a new business model for small and medium sized engineering enterprises.
A good example of an innovative, enabling technology is the Ethernet-compatible control and timing network that is developed for use in CERN’s control system. This so-called White Rabbit network allows synchronising measurement stations to a precision better than 1 nanosecond, even when they are separated by 10 kilometres. As the designs are Open, this CERN technology found easily its way for use in astronomical telescope fields and in long distance atomic clock time transfer applications.
Several European SMEs are now selling these innovative designs to clients in scientific and industrial domains. At the same time these projects are generating new business as clients need support to adapt the Open Hardware designs to their specific needs.