There are two main categories of generic accelerator control hardware solutions available for the CERN community:

• Off-the-shelf industrial modules (PLCs, deported I/Os) supported by the BE-ICS group
• Custom electronics (Front-End computers, Distributed I/O Tier hardware kit) supported by the BE-CEM group.

Each category has its defined use-cases and relies on well-standardized, real-time communication protocols, e.g. Profinet for industrial controls, and White Rabbit and WorldFIP for custom electronics. However, until today, there was no centrally-supported service at CERN to allow mixing the two environments by interfacing industrial PLCs with custom-electronics, while ensuring real-time data exchange.

This gap is now filled by the new FMC Profinet module, designed in the frame of the Distributed I/O Tier project by the BE-CEM-EDL section in collaboration with BE-CEM-EPR, SY-ABT and BE-ICS.

It is a small mezzanine that can be plugged on top of any custom electronics board to enable real-time, industrial Ethernet communication with off-the-shelf PLCs. Our FMC implements a full Profinet RT/IRT stack by incorporating the ERTEC 200P chip from Siemens. It hides the complexity of Industrial Ethernet communication, exposing raw control data to a user. We have successfully evaluated the first prototypes in the lab by controlling the state of 4 LEDs in a VME crate from a Siemens S7-1500 PLC.

In the future this mezzanine will for example allow to control radiation-tolerant DI/OT equipment from a PLC for the Powering Interlocks Controller v2 - currently under development by the TE-MPE group.