Software platform for control systems enhances Industrial IoT

“ARC believes the influx of new IIoT technologies now entering the automation market has the potential to be a major disruption to existing business models that have been relatively stable for decades,” said Harry Forbes, research director at ARC Advisory Group.

“An excellent example is Titanium Control, which combines Wind River’s long experience in real-time operating systems with on-premise cloud computing technology. This combination enables the virtualisation of real-time automation applications that until recently could only be implemented in embedded systems hardware. The implications of this capability for the manufacturing automation market are very far-reaching, and automation suppliers are noticing.”

Because traditional industrial control systems were not designed to support IoT, most are rigid, single purpose, and have a high cost to deploy, integrate, and maintain. Additionally, the obsolescence cycle is driving system updates that require new systems to keep pace with innovation while maintaining or lowering capital costs.

Titanium Control is a commercially deployable on-premise cloud infrastructure that virtualises traditional physical subsystems using a platform based on open standards. It delivers the high performance, high availability, flexibility, and low latency needed to reduce capital and operating expenses, as well as minimise unscheduled downtime for industrial applications and control services at any scale. Unlike enterprise IT virtualisation platforms, it provides high reliability for applications and services deployed at the network edge, for example in fog deployments.

Key features of Titanium Control include:

• De facto standard open source software for on-premise cloud and virtualisation, including Linux, real-time Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and OpenStack
• High performance and high availability with accelerated vSwitch and inter-VM communication, plus virtual infrastructure management
• Security features including isolation, secure boot and Trusted Platform Module enabled through Enhanced Platform Awareness
• Scalability from two to over 100 compute nodes
• Hitless software updates and patching with no interruption to services or applications

“With the emergence of Industrial IoT, companies are looking to deploy next-generation open and secure control systems; Titanium Control addresses this need, and is in active trials with customers in industries ranging from manufacturing to energy to healthcare,” said Jim Douglas, president of Wind River.

“Our software has been providing these companies with powerful ways to increase efficiency and bolster safety, security, and reliability for the last 35 years. With the addition of Titanium Control to our product portfolio, Wind River is driving a new industrial era through virtualisation, real-time performance and edge-to-cloud connectivity.”

Titanium Control is part of the Wind River Titanium Cloud portfolio of virtualisation products for the deployment of critical services from operations to data center environments that require real-time performance and continuous service availability. It is optimised for Intel Xeon processors, and is pre-validated on hardware from the leading providers of Intel-based servers.