Lawrence Livermore Labs- National Ignition Facility

Return to Aerospace/Defense List

Contact:
National Ignition Facility
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
7000 East Avenue
Livermore, CA 94550

Tools used:
OIS' ORBexpress™, CORBA®

Description:
Scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) are solving one of the world's most challenging distributed systems control problems using a high-speed object request broker, ORBexpress™, developed by Objective Interface Systems, Inc. in Reston, Virginia.

The NIF's Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) must integrate more than 40,000 control points to manage 192 laser beamlines that deliver 2 MegaJoule pulses of optical energy onto a BB-sized fusion fuel capsule in a pulse 25 nanoseconds long. The result is an energy-producing inertial confinement fusion reaction similar to the ignition of a small sun.

The $1.2 billion laser facility is under construction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. When completed in 2003, it will be housed in a building the size of a football stadium -- 704 feet long by 403 feet wide by 82 feet high. The scientific data it produces will support three diverse objectives. As a key component of the DOE's Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program, the NIF will enable the US to maintain its nuclear device stockpile without resorting to underground testing. It will also collect preliminary data about fusion as a clean energy source. And it will provide more realistic data for simulating the behavior of stars and the origins of the universe.

"ICCS must be highly automated and robust and must operate continuously around the clock," says John Woodruff, Livermore's Lead Architect for Supervisory Software. The control system is being built with Ada 95 on a "modern object-oriented software framework that will be extensible and maintainable throughout the facility's life cycle." ICCS computer scientist Robert Carey cites particular features of ORBexpress's most recent release. "Its reference domain concept allows us to isolate and use multiple versions of application software or operating systems. And it is visibly speedier than earlier versions, which is important in applications involving huge amounts of data. We find that the performance is sufficient to meet our most demanding requirements." Within the ORBexpress environment, NIF programmers can develop code that is "reusable across multiple platforms, applications, and indeed other projects," says Woodruff.

Livermore's Web site, http://lasers.llnl.gov/lasers/nif/ICCS, offers a detailed architectural overview of the NIF's ICCS, including the role played by ORBexpress software.

"ORBexpress(TM) is a third-generation, CORBA 2.2-compliant object request broker that combines the reliability of a mature software product with the accelerated performance rate required to manage interactions within real-time applications," explains Reynolds Beckwith, president of Objective Interface. "With ORBexpress, NIF's extremely complex control system can easily be modified or extended to accommodate changing research objectives, instrumentation advancements, new experimental techniques, or even additional operating systems like non-UNIX VxWorks or Intel x86/Windows NT." The company's Web site, http://www.ois.com, describes the ORBexpress product family, as well as the mentoring approach to customer support that was provided to Livermore for the NIF project.

"We are pleased that Lawrence Livermore Scientists continue to choose our products for such a demanding role in the NIF ICCS," notes Brad Balfour, Director of Technology Services at Objective Interface. "Our ORBexpress engineering team includes contributors to the CORBA standard itself, and that enables us to satisfy truly tough customers like this one."

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a premier applied-science national security laboratory operated by the University of California under contract with the Department of Energy. One of its primary missions is to ensure that the nation's nuclear weapons remain safe, secure, and reliable and to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons worldwide. This mission uses LLNL's programs in advanced defense technologies, lasers, energy, environment, biosciences, and basic science to apply the Lab's unique capabilities, and to enhance the competencies needed for its national security mission. The Laboratory serves as a resource to the U.S. government and a partner with industry and academia.

Disclaimer: Based on a paper prepared at LLNL for U.S. DOE. Neither LLNL nor the U.S. Government makes any warranty, expressed or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility of the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, product, or process disclosed in this article.