Industrial enterprises are transforming their businesses by combining their
computer and shop-floor automation domains, an initiative known as Industry
4.0. A key to this transformation is the new time-sensitive network (TSN)
technology that connects these domains despite their diverging requirements.
NXP’s new LS1028A processor integrates this technology and a host of
other features, helping to enable next-generation manufacturing equipment meet the needs of
these industrial enterprises.
To get an inkling of the impact of converging disparate networks, think back
to when many enterprises adopted voice over IP (VoIP). The shift required a
change in organizational structure and technology. Companies until then had
separate computing and telecommunications groups to manage the networks and
phone systems that until then had been separate. Telecom folks had greater
concern about reliability (think “five nines”) and cost (outside
lines and service were expensive). The technical side paralleled these
business issues. VoIP required greater reliability and determinism from the
network — attributes that are the antithesis of the founding principles
of Ethernet. In this case, adding basic QoS features to Ethernet switches and
raising their per-port bandwidth 10x to 1Gbps overcame the technical barriers.
Today, industrial enterprises are embarking on an even more significant
change. They seek to broadly merge information technology (IT) and operations
technology (OT). The former is the systems used to make data into useful
information. The latter is the systems used to make materials into products.
For a manufacturer, IT includes common systems like accounting, email, and
customer-relationship management, and it also includes manufacturing-specific
systems for planning and logistics. These are computer-based systems without
hard real-time constraints and can use the best-effort approach of regular
Ethernet. On the other hand, OT are real-time embedded systems for process
control, workflow management and process monitoring.
In support of the development of Industry 4.0 technology, OT has been
borrowing technology from IT. Some OT systems use Unix-like or Windows
operating systems instead of purpose-built real-time OSs. They also often use
an Industrial Ethernet technology that adapts standard Ethernet to deliver real-time response and
work with legacy industrial communication protocols. Unfortunately, the many
Industrial Ethernet protocols neither interoperate with each other nor with
standard Ethernet, limiting the economies of scale for technology suppliers
and thus slowing innovation. A single machine in a factory may connect to
different Industrial Ethernet networks, each running its specific protocol,
for different control functions. The manufacturer must deploy gateways to pass
data among the different networks or to IT systems.
Moreover, industrial enterprises seek to analyze data generated by their
production equipment, to manage operations remotely, to enable machines to
coordinate among themselves autonomously and to gain efficiencies from
linking production data and IT systems such as those for enterprise resource
planning. In short, they want to mirror the commercial IoT and create an
industrial IoT in their production facilities. The industrial IoT requires
machines and computers to communicate directly with each other to share data.
Data analysis can be done in the cloud or locally for improved latency,
reduced bandwidth or improved security.
Because of their limited interoperability, Industrial Ethernet protocols are
not well suited to Industry 4.0. At the same time, standard IT-oriented
Ethernet does not deliver the real-time performance that control systems
demand. The IEEE®, however, in 2004 had formed a group for audio/video
streaming for consumer applications, later extending its efforts to meet
professional standards. This group developed a family of audio/video bridging
(AVB) standards for time synchronization (borrowing from IEEE® 1588),
traffic shaping and admission controls. Although not perfectly suited to
industrial applications, these standards provided a framework for managing
Ethernet traffic.
Recognizing the potential to adapt AVB for industrial use, the IEEE group
changed its name to Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN)
and began revising the 802 standards family to address the needs of industrial
and automotive applications, as well as improving features for professional
audio-video use. New standards define time-aware traffic shaping and policing
to enable scheduling critical traffic. To facilitate scheduling, new standards
enabled the preemption of non-critical frames. A new standard for redundant
network paths improves network reliability.
The technology-development efforts of the TSN group have been a lot more
substantial than that required to get voice traffic on the enterprise network,
and the result of these efforts will be more profound. Industrial companies
can now deploy a single IEEE-standard Ethernet network that carries both the
time-critical control traffic of OT systems and the regular best-effort
traffic of IT systems. Now that pivotal networking technologies are defined,
these companies can focus on the strategic benefits of OT-IT convergence and
Industry 4.0.
NXP is proud to enable Industry 4.0 equipment manufacturers to incorporate
TSN technology in their equipment. We designed our new QorIQ® Layerscape
LS1028A
processor for the industrial IoT. To support IT-OT convergence, this SoC
integrates an Ethernet switch and two additional Ethernet ports, all
implementing protocols from the TSN family. Two powerful 64-bit Arm CPUs
provide the computing performance required for modern industrial applications.
The processor’s GPU and LCD interface allows its use in human-machine
systems with next-generation interfaces. NXP software includes an open-source
industrial Linux SDK with real-time performance and support for TSN standards.
Importantly, the processor integrates NXP’s trust architecture,
intended to enable bullet-proof IoT security.
Built on proven NXP technology and part of the NXP 15-year product longevity
program, the LS1028A is a processor industrial OEMs can count on for years.
OEMs can begin developing TSN-enabled systems today using the NXP
LS1021ATSN
reference platform.
QorIQ® Layerscape 1028A Industrial Applications Processor
Industrial Ethernet (Wikipedia)
Time-Sensitive Networking Task Group (part of the IEEE 802.1 Working
Group)
IoT security at blog.nxp.com
