SPECS as ECS interface

SPECS - The Serial Protocol for the Experiment Control System

In LHCb the recommended solution for connecting Electronics modules to the Control System in radiation areas is the SPECS System. The SPECS System is composed of a PCI master card which can address several SPECS slaves. The SPECS slave functionality is available as a SPECS-Slave chip. This chip can be incorporated directly in an electronics board or by using a mezzanine card. Three standard interfaces are provided by the SPECS Slave to control the components on the board or at distances of up to 10 meters: I²C, JTAG and a (simple) parallel bus (only directly on the board).

Software:

• The Specs Drivers and low-level Libraries and their documentation is available here

• The integration with PVSS is available here

Documentation:

• SPECS Documentation version 3.5 from 24th February 2005

• SPECS Description

• SPECS Usage in LHCb

• The SPECS Slave Mezzanine board

Presentations:

• SPECS Status, presentation at the Electronics Workshop in February 6 2003

• SPECS News, presentation at the LHCb Week February 24 2003

Please send comments and suggestions to clara.gaspar@cern.ch.