In September 2023, Red Hat (a supplier of open-source software) and Intel announced a new industrial edge platform designed to allow industrial companies to use standard IT technologies to access real-time production data insights. The idea behind the development of this platform is to help manufacturers automate previously manual industrial automation tasks, such as system development, software deployment and management, cybersecurity risk reduction, prescriptive and predictive maintenance improvements, co-locate deterministic and non-deterministic workloads, and reduce turnaround time.
According to Kelly Switt, senior director of Intelligent Edge global business development lead at Red Hat, Codesys (a provider of IEC 61131-3 automation software for engineering control systems) has joined the Red Hat/Intel collaboration in its work on this industrial edge platform to contribute to the virtualization and containerization of industrial controls.
Explaining how Codesys’s involvement expands on the Red Hat/Intel industrial edge platform, Switt said, “When we initially introduced the industrial edge platform it was on an isolated process, single system level type performance assurance, using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) real-time and Intel Cache Allocation Technology. Now, the platform can achieve deterministic performance requirements between two or more systems across the network using existing features in RHEL, such as real-time kernel and accelerated packet processing to meet the requirements of safety-critical controls for the industrial automation space.”
Switt added that, by using Codesys Virtual Control, “any modern system can be transformed into an industrial controller—from small, dedicated devices to IT farms—completely independent of the hardware substructure. In the past, many device manufacturers designed devices using the Codesys Runtime System to provide a complete, embedded system. Now, Codesys provides an open, modular system consisting of the hardware (any general-purpose compute device) on top of an operating system offering virtualization with a hypervisor that consists of central processing units, operating systems and containerization to support the Codesys Runtime System.”
