vPLC
2 x CODESYS Virtual Control SL
2 x CODESYS Virtual Safe Control SL
1 x CODESYS Edge Gateway SL
Further information: CODESYS Virtual Control SL
Operating system
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.2 with PREEMPT_RT
kernel based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Real Time
Red Hat Device Edge provides the flexibility to deploy and manage workloads on small, resource constrained devices at scale. It combines Red Hat Enterprise Linux with MicroShift, a lightweight Kubernetes distribution from Red Hat OpenShift, so users can deploy anything from traditional Linux workloads to complex containerized services using Kubernetes.
Hardware
Multi-core IPC with Intel® Time Coordinated Computing (TCC) » Real-Time Computing at the Edge (intel.com)
and Cache Allocation Technology (CAT) » https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/intel-sdm.html
Intel® Core(TM) i7-1185GRE Tiger Lake UP3
Network
Cisco Catalyst Industrial Ethernet switches to provide resilient, secure access for production assets (I/O, machines, etc) to the software defined automation
Cisco SD-Access Architecture Network Components “Fabric in a box”
See further information:
https://blogs.cisco.com/internet-of-things/is-it-time-to-virtualize-your-factory-floor?ccid=cc002643&oid=pstit031879
AI-Application / workload consolidation
- Live Stream object segmentation with OpenVINO™ YOLOv8 AI container.
- Models accelerated in the hardware using OpenVINO™
- OpenVINO™ is an open-source toolkit to optimize a deep learning model from almost any framework and deploy it with best-in-class performance on a range of Intel® processors and other hardware platforms.
- Yolov8 is a state of art model from Ultralytics that detects and segments pre-defined objects
Reduced space and wiring requirements
The space in your control cabinet is packed? Your 24VDC power supply is already at capacity? Don't worry: For an additional CODESYS Virtual Control, you don't need new cables or additional power supply on your central computer. And your I/Os can be connected via Industrial Ethernet anyway.
Flexible orchestration
You are a Linux nerd? Or like to use web tools? Or want to concentrate exclusively on your automation tasks as an automation engineer? Just use Linux scripts and tools such as Kubernetes/OpenShift to set up CODESYS Virtual Control - or use the CODESYS Automation Server administration platform. The latter works completely without Linux knowledge. And the bonus on the latest Intel platforms with Intel® TCC Cache Allocation Technology: it ensures real-timeliness for your CODESYS Virtual Control PLCs!
Security-by-Design
Protect your control system by intelligently splitting up application parts and encapsulating them in the container. For updates or in the event of attacks, you can easily shut down and restart affected parts - without impairing the overall system. CODESYS Virtual Control makes it easy - just like microservices in IT.
Maintenance made easy
Security vulnerability discovered! Hundreds of PLCs are affected. You have to update the firmware or application as soon as possible. This can take days, weeks or even months! Unless your PLCs run as virtual systems on a central computer. In that case, it takes you mere seconds to perform the update. CODESYS Virtual Control makes it possible!
Efficiency by workload consolidation
Take the maximum advantage of the latest Intel platforms with Intel® TCC Cache Allocation Technology: Run your performance-demanding AI workloads, such as defect detection or object segmentation, side-by-side with your CODESYS Virtual Control PLCs on the same system – while retaining the real-timeliness for the PLCs!