Nuclear fusion sets out to reproduce on earth the lifecycle mechanisms of stars in space. Where does the challenge lie? Mainly, to create a safe, clean and inexhaustible energy source. Fusion energy is the energy generated by the nuclear fusion between two atomic nuclei.

As part of this overall endeavor the 30th Symposium on Fusion Technology has just been held. SOFT'18 is Europe's most important meeting point of nuclear fusion scientists and professionals. The symposium was hosted this year from 16 to 21 September by the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) in the peerless venue of the Ancient Theater of Taormina in Giardini Naxos (Messina).

It attracted a turnout of about 950 scientists and engineers from over 60 private companies plus 30 exhibitors. Keynote speakers were Patrick Anthony Child (Deputy-Director General of the European Commission's Research and Innovation Directorate), Federico Testa (President of ENEA), Bernard Bigot (Director General of the international ITER project) and Mario Bolognari, Mayor of Taormina.

GMV took part in the lecture cycle, displaying a poster on the "FPGA-based interlock system for the chopper of the Linear IFMIF Prototype Accelerator injector", doing so jointly with the Research Group on Instrumentation and Applied Acoustics (I2A2) of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, the QST Rokkasho Fusion Institute of Japan, the EU's joint undertaking Fusion for Energy (F4E) and the IZPILab Beam Laboratory of the University of the Basque Country. This research work puts forward a solution for the required interlock system, in particular, a COTS-based reconfigurable embedded system for data acquisition and control applications.