Accelerator Real-time Edge AI for Distributed Systems (READS) Proposal

TL;DR

This paper proposes a real-time edge AI framework for accelerator control, integrating machine learning into Fermilab operations to improve stability, uptime, and beam management through innovative hardware and algorithms.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework for real-time edge AI in accelerator systems, including digital twins and ML deployment on embedded hardware, applicable to future upgrades.

Findings

Enhanced beam stability using deep reinforcement learning.

Reduced beam downtime with de-blending techniques.

Demonstrated real-time ML processing at millisecond scale.

Abstract

Our objective will be to integrate ML into Fermilab accelerator operations and furthermore provide an accessible framework which can also be used by a broad range of other accelerator systems with dynamic tuning needs. We will develop of real-time accelerator control using embedded ML on-chip hardware and fast communication between distributed systems in this proposal. We will demonstrate this technology for the Mu2e experiment by increasing the overall duty factor and uptime of the experiment through two synergistic projects. First, we will use deep reinforcement learning techniques to improve the performance of the regulation loop through guided optimization to provide stable proton beams extracted from the Delivery Ring to the Mu2e experiment. This requires the development of a digital twin of the system to model the accelerator and develop real-time ML algorithms. Second, we will use de-blending techniques to disentangle and classify overlapping beam losses in the Main Injector and Recycler Ring to reduce overall beam downtime in each machine. This ML model will be deployed within a semi-autonomous operational mode. Both applications require processing at the millisecond scale and will share similar ML-in-hardware techniques and beam instrumentation readout technology. A collaboration between Fermilab and Northwestern University will pull together the talents and resources of accelerator physicists, beam instrumentation engineers, embedded system architects, FPGA board design experts, and ML experts to solve complex real-time accelerator controls challenges which will enhance the physics program. More broadly, the framework developed for Accelerator Real-time Edge AI Distributed Systems (READS) can be applied to future projects as the accelerator complex is upgraded for the PIP-II and DUNE era.