Software control system instrument is a mandatory part of a modern integrated system of controlling any reactor. The Sonix software were used with all instruments on IBR-2 for a long time. Continuous development of instrument as well as new microelectronics and achievements of software technologies encouraged us to revise the conceptual decisions from the beginning of 90-th to today. When we had designed the new software system Sonix+ we had in mind a long-term experience of the Sonix exploitation and recent trends.

The Sonix was designed for VME platform. Using x86-platform with Microsoft Windows operating system for instrument control reduces the overall costs of the system and users are more experienced with this environment. Also many useful software products are available for Windows OS. Existing VME hardware controllers can be connected to PC using VME-PCI adapters .

The Sonix+ software inherited some basic solutions from the older Sonix system. In particular, those are the modular organization using special database for device control and reflection of the current system state, using script programming for batch instrument actions. At the same time some basic features were revised to make system more unified, flexible and comfortable for user. All changes can be grouped as follows:

• structural changes
• system configuration enhancements
• expansion of script language
• GUI unification
• Introducing a technical data format etc.

There are also a new possibilities in spectra visualization and development.

The main object of the user attention in the Sonix+ system became “device” not “module” or “server” as it was in the Sonix earlier. Device could represent as a real hardware element of the instrument (stepper motor, detector etc.) or a virtual element. For instance, the “expo” device is designed for exposure control and spectra saving, including all detectors. The virtual device “sliding angle and platform rotation”, implemented as a superposition of several stepper motors, is very useful for experiment control at the REMUR instrument. Creating virtual devices and representing several devices as a single device became possible due to device interface formalization and unification and due to introduction of unified protocol for communication between modules. The module communication protocol in the Sonix+ enables to create programs above devices, for instance, tuning tools.

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