Factory changes drive opportunity

Today’s fiercely competitive manufacturing environment is driving companies to constantly sharpen their operational efficiencies and lower costs, without compromising quality, employee safety, or performance. Manufacturers are seeking new strategies that address a range of critical areas, including simplifying the purchase and support of industrial systems, reducing the numbers and varieties of systems in the factory, and optimizing the use of floor space.

Challenges

• Find new ways to lower operating expenses, a large part of which are the purchase and support of industrial systems, such as spares, maintenance and repairs.

• Prevent system proliferation from consuming precious space and straining IT resources.

• Minimize downtime and respond to unique support requirements for configuration, backups, spares, and software patching that result from dealing with numerous systems.

• Oversee a large number and variety of systems, which means more devices to install, provision, manage, secure, and fail, and more integration tasks to manage, such as networking, cabling, mounting, and shielding, and their attendant costs.

• Provide the housing and integration of numerous systems, and respond to the resulting increase in overall power consumption and cost, without compromising performance.

Solution

• Efficiency can be improved when multiple factory functions are consolidated onto a single hardware platform.

• Consolidated equipment can decrease operating expense, factory footprint, energy consumption, and integration and support effort as the combined system often takes up less factory floor space than the multiple systems it replaces.

• Multicore architectures and hardware-based virtualization accelerators provide the computing power needed to consolidate multiple operating systems (OSs) and their applications on a single physical board, and deliver real-time, deterministic performance in a virtualized environment

Reduce cost, complexity, and footprint by consolidating industrial systemsIntel demonstrates how to combine multiple industrial workloads on one system—including deterministic real-time functions1

Virtualized Industrial Workloads in Harmony A custom-built robot “musician” carefully manipulates the strings of a zither, while the single computing platform that powers the robot manages motion control, HMI, and vibration analysis in a real-time, deterministic manner.

Solution Brief Industrial System Consolidation

Benefits of industrial system consolidation

In recent years, industrial automation efforts have increasingly turned to virtualization as a solution. Virtualization allows traditionally separate subsystems—such as motion control, programmable logic control (PLC), human machine interface (HMI), and machine vision—to be combined into a single multicore platform. This platform can host real-time and general-purpose applications together as if each was running on its own dedicated computer.

With fewer subsystems to house and integrate, costly factory floor space may be conserved, saving what can be a sizable expense. Fewer devices can also mean fewer devices to install, provision, manage, and secure, each of which brings its own cost, risk of failure, and so on.

Intel demonstrates deterministic, real-time performance

In an effort to help industrial organizations reap the benefits of industrial system consolidation, Intel has developed a proof-of-concept demonstration that illustrates how multiple industrial workloads—including motion control, HMIs, and vibration analysis—can be combined on a single system while achieving real-time performance in a virtualized environment.1

Using an Intel® Core™ i7 processor-based computing platform, the “Virtual Industrial Workloads in Harmony” demonstration integrates a virtualization software stack using a hypervisor with preconfigured virtual machines (VMs) running a combination of real-time and general-purpose OSs. It includes Wind River VxWorks* RTOS to run applications with real-time performance requirements, while simultaneously running applications on Wind River Linux* 5.0 and Windows* 7 Professional 64 bit. McAfee Embedded Control* security software ensures only trusted software runs on the Windows partition. Watch the video to see the demo in action.

Start consolidating today

Virtualization technology running on multicore Intel Core processors helps you reduce the cost and complexity of designing and building industrial machines. By safely partitioning workloads so that they can perform in a deterministic fashion2 you can bring together previously discrete industrial workloads such as motion control, HMIs, PLCs, data acquisition, and more.

Learn more about using system consolidation and Intel® multicore and virtualization technology to help meet your customers’ needs for greater efficiency and reduced complexity in the factory environment: http://www.intel.com/industrial.

Industrial system consolidation: Requirements

Three things are required for industrial system consolidation:

• Embedded virtualization with a real-time hypervisor and real-time operating system (RTOS)

• Intel® multicore technology

• Intel’s hardware acceleration for virtualization known as Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT)

Virtualization enables multiple OSs and their applications to run on the same physical board, while high-performing Intel multicore processors and Intel VT provide the computing power needed to support those multiple functions in a real-time, deterministic manner.1 Learn more at www.intel.com/virtualization.

“Intel is helping developers realize

the trend of system consolidation

by demonstrating an integrated

approach to virtualized real-time

systems.”

– Tim Appleton, Business Development Manager, Energy and Industrial Segment, Intel Corporation

Solution Provided By:

1. Results have been estimated based on internal Intel analysis and are provided for informational purposes only. Any difference in system hardware or software design or configuration may affect actual performance.2. Intel® Virtualization Technology requires a computer system with an enabled Intel® processor, BIOS, and virtual machine monitor (VMM). Functionality, performance or other benefits will vary depending on hardware and software configurations. Software applications may not be compatible with all operating systems. Consult your PC manufacturer. For more information, visit http://www.intel.com/go/virtualizationINFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH INTEL® PRODUCTS. NO LICENSE, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, BY ESTOPPEL OR OTHERWISE, TO ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IS GRANTED BY THIS DOCUMENT. EXCEPT AS PROVIDED IN INTEL’S TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF SALE FOR SUCH PRODUCTS, INTEL ASSUMES NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER, AND INTEL DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY, RELATING TO SALE AND/OR USE OF INTEL PRODUCTS INCLUDING LIABILITY OR WARRANTIES RELATING TO FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR INFRINGEMENT OF ANY PATENT, COPYRIGHT OR OTHER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT.A “Mission Critical Application” is any application in which failure of the Intel Product could result, directly or indirectly, in personal injury or death. SHOULD YOU PURCHASE OR USE INTEL’S PRODUCTS FOR ANY SUCH MISSION CRITICAL APPLICATION, YOU SHALL INDEMNIFY AND HOLD INTEL AND ITS SUBSIDIARIES, SUBCONTRACTORS AND AFFILIATES, AND THE DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, AND EMPLOYEES OF EACH, HARMLESS AGAINST ALL CLAIMS, COSTS, DAMAGES, AND EXPENSES AND REASONABLE ATTORNEYS’ FEES ARISING OUT OF, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, ANY CLAIM OF PRODUCT LIABILITY, PERSONAL INJURY, OR DEATH ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF SUCH MISSION CRITICAL APPLICATION, WHETHER OR NOT INTEL OR ITS SUBCONTRACTOR WAS NEGLIGENT IN THE DESIGN, MANUFACTURE, OR WARNING OF THE INTEL PRODUCT OR ANY OF ITS PARTS. Intel may make changes to specifications and product descriptions at any time, without notice. Designers must not rely on the absence or characteristics of any features or instructions marked “reserved” or “undefined.” Intel reserves these for future definition and shall have no responsibility whatsoever for conflicts or incompatibilities arising from future changes to them. The information here is subject to change without notice. Do not finalize a design with this information. The products described in this document may contain design defects or errors known as errata which may cause the product to deviate from published specifications. Current characterized errata are available on request. Contact your local Intel sales office or your distributor to obtain the latest specifications and before placing your product order. Copies of documents which have an order number and are referenced in this document, or other Intel literature, may be obtained by calling 1-800-548-4725, or by visiting Intel’s Web site at www.intel.com. © 2013, Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. Printed in USA 1013/RH/CMD/PDF Please Recycle 329752-001US