How It Works
Edge Controls for Industrial is a complete control software platform for industrial applications.
Benefits of Edge Controls for Industrial include:
- Reduced capital and operational expenditures
- Increased flexibility
- Increased availability
- OT-predictability with IT-like management and security
- Interoperability
Featured Components
Edge-Control Protocol Bridge
Bridge a multitude of Industrial protocols to reduce complexity and improve flexibility. Furthermore, leverage OPC UA Publish/Subscribe with Time-Sensitive Networking to gain deterministic communication.
ACRN* Type-1 Hypervisor
Virtualize workloads with ACRN* real-time hypervisor and consolidate physical hardware to reduce costs and improve reliability.
Real-time Optimizations
Easily create custom embedded Linux* operating systems with Xenomai I-Pipe Kernel or PREEMPT-RT Kernel patches. Leverage pre-configured kernel configurations and boot optimizations with real-time applications.
RTS* Type-1 Hypervisor
Run real-time workloads in a partitioned and virtualized environment with this commercially available hypervisor.
How Edge Controls for Industrial Achieve Determinism
Determinism is defined as the ability to operate with a predictable outcome. In the context of the Linux kernel, this means that applications can run without experiencing spurious interrupts, which enables them to achieve consistent real-time performance.
At its core, ECI is an optimized Linux kernel with specific configurations to enable real-time workloads to operate deterministically. This is accomplished by configuring the following:
- By default, all Linux kernel processes are scheduled to run on CPU 0. This effectively isolates the remaining CPUs and permits real-time applications to run deterministically (i.e. not interrupted) when scheduled on the isolated CPUs (i.e. not CPU 0).This creates a side effect that any workloads which utilize CPU 0 will experience degraded performance. Therefore, it is recommended to move all critical processes to a CPU other than CPU 0.
- ECI builds the Linux kernel to be tickless. With a tickless kernel, timer interrupts do not occur at regular intervals but are only delivered as required. This minimizes the number of kernel interrupts to the minimum required.
- ECI builds the Linux kernel to maintain a persistent CPU power/frequency state. With this configuration, the CPU never reduces clock speed, remaining at full potential to better process real-time workloads.
- ECI uses a Linux kernel that has been patched using PREEMPT-RT. It allows to preempt kernel tasks: user-mode application tasks can take priority over the kernel’s tasks.