While PSI's proton accelerator, which went into service in 1974, was primarily used in the early days for elementary particle physics, today the focus is on applications for solid-state physics, radiopharmaceuticals and cancer therapy. Since it started operating, it has been constantly developed further, and its performance today is as much as 2.4 mA, which is 24 times higher than the initial 100 µA. This is why the facility is now considered a high-performance proton accelerator, or HIPA (High Intensity Proton Accelerator) for short. Basically, it consists of three accelerators in series: the Cockcroft-Walton, the injector-2 cyclotron, and the ring-cyclotron. They accelerate the protons to around 80 percent of the speed of light.