The Herzberg Extensible Adaptive optics Real-Time Toolkit (HEART) is currently under development at Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics in Victoria.

HEART is a CPU based design which is scalable from modest sized systems to very large future AO systems such as the TMT NFIRAOS.  The system architecture decomposes an RTC system into multiple HEART pipes consisting of one or more HEART blocks.  Each HEART pipe is a collection of blocks which perform processing of one or more data streams. Blocks are connected within the pipe in such a way that downstream blocks process the outputs of the upstream block. These blocks may be triggered sequentially within the block or may operate on a data stream in parallel in a pipelined fashion.

Different pipe and block configurations allow HEART to be used to implement a variety of different types of AO systems.

This presentation will provide a high level overview of the architectural design of HEART along with information about how HEART is being used to develop several different RTC system.

Malcolm Smith, Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics