CODESYS Virtual PLC Demo

Orchestration

CODESYS Automation Server hosted on device

Further information: automation-server.com


vPLC

2 x CODESYS Virtual Control SL
1 x CODESYS Virtual Safe Control SL
1 x CODESYS Edge Gateway SL

Further information: CODESYS Virtual Control SL


Container

Podman enabled for Intel® TCC with CAT


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 guarantee stable, secure real-time access to the I/Os of software-defined automation in machines and systems.

Cisco SD-Access Architecture Network Components “Fabric in a box”

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/solutions/CVD/Campus/cisco-sda-design-guide.html#SDAccessArchitectureNetworkComponents

See further information:
https://blogs.cisco.com/internet-of-things/is-it-time-to-virtualize-your-factory-floor?ccid=cc002643&oid=pstit031879


Fieldbus

Two independent Ethernet based fieldbus systems from one Ethernet port using vLAN, powered by XDP


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-the-art model from Ultralytics that detects and segments pre-defined objects

Measurements of bundle setups:

Application:

100 FB calls
100 operators
50 Profisafe host instances
Simple mapping Input → Output
Cycle time 5 ms


CODESYS Virtual Control SL

With AI workload, Intel CAT disabled

Cycle Time: 27 µs
Max. Task Jitter: 77 µs
Avg. Ethernet Send Time: 4,5 µs
Avg. Ethernet Recv Time: 3,4 µs

 

With AI workload, Intel CAT disabled

Cycle Time: 20 µs
Max. Task Jitter: 11 µs
Avg. Ethernet Send Time: 2,8 µs
Avg. Ethernet Recv Time: 3,2 µs

Cycle Time: 2,3 ms
Roundtrip time safe protocol: 25 ms

 


CODESYS Virtual Safe Control SL

With AI workload, Intel CAT disabled

Cycle Time: 2,3 ms
Roundtrip time safe protocol: 25 ms

 

With AI workload, Intel CAT disabled

Cycle Time: 1,6 ms
FSoE roundtrip time: 10 ms

 

Advantages of Virtual PLCs:

Cost Savings

Replace n physical PLCs with a single platform containing n virtual controllers

 

Scalability

You need a small controller for a small logic task? Or a full-blown motion controller? No problem – with CODESYS Virtual Control you can implement both on a suitable device at a mouse click. The appropriate license turns the whole thing into a small controller or a motion controller.

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: They ensure real-time capapilities 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!

Flexibility

New function in your machine = new hardware? Not necessarily! Simply add a new virtual PLC and use it to implement the new function. CODESYS Virtual Control relieves you of the pressure to use new hardware in order to implement new functions.

SoftSafety

Realize a virtual Safety controller according to IEC 61508 SIL3 through diversified encoding.

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-time capability for the PLCs!

Jobs @ CODESYS