Industrial PC
Semiconductor solutions for rugged and reliable PC architecture for harsh industrial environments
Edge computing has now established itself as one of the most important trends in factory automation. Increasingly powerful industrial computers enable factory planners to keep computationally intensive tasks such as machine and process control, linking automation subsystems, data analysis or graphical visualization close to the factory floor. Industrial PCs are thus becoming a second pillar of factory automation alongside or even may replace classic PLC hardware, offering the additional option of processing sensitive data on site rather than moving it to a cloud. On the one hand, suppliers of industrial PCs can benefit from a rapidly developing consumer PC technology e.g. making use of established tools, user interfacing or graphics capabilities . On the other hand, they need to provide an industrial-grade, robust PC architecture that can withstand harsh environmental conditions, high tempreatures, is immune to interference and runs in a mechanically and electrically stable manner to avoid downtimes. This is in contrast to consumer markets, where extremely cost-oriented requirements prevail.
Industry PCs typically provide computation power along embedded microprocessors well known from classic PC markets and are sufficiently powerfull for e.g. complex motion control tasks. Formfactors may include panel integrated and types in compact housing to be mounted on DIN Rail. A huge number of various interfaces and slots complement any offering. Longevity of Industrial PCs in operation differs as well from PC use in consumer markets.
All these correspond to specific industrial requirements for PC sub-systems and components. E.g. the power supply part of an industrial PC requires low heating up at small form factor as well as operating for long system lifetime in 24/7 operation in the control cabinet.
Infineon is providing a range of semiconductor solutions that meet these requirements in terms of power supply (CoolMOSTM, CoolGaNTM ; CoolSiCTM) , data protection (OPTIGA™ Trust ), device protection and wired or wireless (AIROC™ Wi-Fi & Combos) connectivity. Infineon’s selected memory product portfolio includes HyperBUSTM and synchronous SRAM types reaching out to 9600MB/s data rate idealy suited as high-speed serial buffer memory and applications requiring low latencies. Coping with high temperatures and challenging reiability requirements SemperTM NOR Flash provides high-performance, safe, and reliable data or code storage.
Dedicated application know-how from Infineon to support your system design complements our offering. A selection of proven power supply reference designs supports you in providing a scalable industrial PC series, whether as box, rack or panel PC, depending on the required computing power.
To protect transferred data and enable the reliable operation of devices, strong security measures are crucial. Check out how using a Raspberry Pi board with an Infineon OPTIGA™ TPM enables secured communication of connected devices in the Internet of Things (IoT).
This demo shows how sensitive data can be communicated through secured channels from one production site to another using OPTIGA™ TPM. Furthermore, the network components in the demo are monitored and unauthorized manipulations detected.
In this video you will learn more about how a PLC-based system can be adequately equipped in order to execute different security use cases.
In this video you will learn about a typical Industry 4.0 architecture enabled by Infineon components including secured end nodes.
High expenses at car manufacturers for fixing software issues by costly recalls are driving the desire to use mobile communication channels to remotely execute software updates over the air (SOTA). Infineon’s OPTIGA™ TPM (Trusted Platform Module) is offering enhanced security mechanisms for the protection of a SOTA system. The demo shows a backend server, which provides a software update securely to a Telemetric ECU. The Telemetric ECU installs the software update in a target ECU using the Infineon Aurix™ controller.
Do you know what industrial automation is?
Join us on this journey through the world of factory automation and find out how semiconductor solutions help factories become smart!
Modern industries typically require many coordinated single steps to accomplish a finished product or any activity flow. Imagine this with no automation in place: any high volume outputs or uninterrupted courses of action at a high level of quality and in a short time would not be possible, would it?