The Advanced Photon Source
a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility

EBRICK (Deprecated)

*** No longer recommended or supported ***

The EPICS brick (EBRICK) is designed to be a low cost solution for an IOC with soft real-time requirements.

The next generation EBRICK, referred to as EBRICK-II, aligns as close as possible with suggestions made by the review committee (ICMS:APS_1239772) as well as replaces the Athena from Diamond Systems since it is now at end of life (announced 2008.01.23). The EBRICK-II is based on the Poseidon Single Board Computer (SBC) from Diamond Systems. Below lists its feature set:

  • EPIC SBC form factor
  • Both PC104 / PC104+ busses
  • Fanless 1GHz VIA Eden ULV processor
  • 512MB DDR2 RAM
  • 4 RS232 serial ports (2-RS232 / 2-RS232(RS485) )
  • 4 USB 2.0 ports
  • VGA, PS/2 mouse and keyboard
  • 10/100/1000 Ethernet
  • SATA/IDE interface
  • ACPI power management
  • 32 16bit ADCs
  • 4 12bit DACs
  • 24bit digital IO
  • Triton enclosure
  • Custom enclosures available
  • 60GB hard drive

The previous implementation was based on the PC104 Athena Single Board Computer from Diamond Systems Corporation. Although it is at end of life, support is still currently provided by BCDA. Below list its feature set.

  • Pentium III based processor clocked at 660Mhz
  • 128Mb of RAM
  • 4 serial and 4 USB (1.0) ports
  • VGA, mouse, and keyboard inputs
  • 16 16bit ADCs
  • 4 12bit DACs
  • 24bit digital IO
  • Pandora enclosure
  • Custom enclosures available using the BC-043
  • 40GB hard drive

These configurations provide a cost effective solution with sufficient processing power and functionality for soft IOC real-time requirements.
Furthermore, other COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) modules as well as in-house developed PC104/PC104+ modules can be incorporated.

synApps: ebrick software module