RTX Customer Overview
Based in Germany and employing more than 450,000 people,
Siemens is one of the world's largest electrical engineering and
electronics companies. Founded more than 150 years ago, Siemens has influenced a wide range
of industries including information and communications, automation and control, power,
transportation, medical, and lighting. Siemens manufactures and sells a wide variety of
Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). These PLCs are designed to meet the needs of all
applications, ranges, and connectivity requirements. Even with this extensive family of products,
Siemens still recognizes the need for PC-based solutions outside of the traditional PLC paradigm.
The Challenge
PCs running automation software are increasingly being
used for applications that typically cannot be handled
by the traditional PLC. While standard operating
systems are fine for some, in a manufacturing
environment where a specific action must take place
every two milliseconds without fail, a one-millisecond
delay due to a non-real-time OS will ruin the entire run.
Further, automation and control functions demand very
deterministic performance since there can be problems
if the control system is not as fast as the process.
Because any background applications or system
operations running in Windows can easily interrupt a
critical automation or control process, Siemens needed
to make its SIMATIC WinAC product running in
Windows work in a highly deterministic, hard real-time
environment.
The IntervalZero Solution
RTX not only delivered hard real-time capability, but also
made the software transition much easier. The extensive
library that comes with RTX allowed for a smooth port
from the Windows environment to the RTX environment.
RTX provided Siemens with a solution that was
practically off-the-shelf; there was little to change of
the existing code.
In researching its options for delivering hard, real-time
Siemens considered using VxWorks, Linux RT, and
QNX but decided they were cost prohibitive as they
would have required too much rewriting of the software.
Siemens has used RTX to insure "hard deterministics"
in its SIMATIC WinAC product for many years and plans
to continue using it. RTX has kept up with all Windows
upgrades, easily transitioning from NT to XP, thereby
helping Siemens stay up-to-date for their Windows
users. Further, the success of WinAC RTX has
increased to the point that Siemens will soon focus
development exclusively on the RTX product for
PC-based control.
For More Information
To learn about IntervalZero’s Embedded Products or to schedule a demo, please contacts us at
Email us at : mail@signalconditioningsolutions.com
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