SIEMENS has equipped the mainboards of its industrial PC family with a Profinet interface.
Designed as a three-port switch, the interface supports isochronous real time and integrates the Siemens PC into Profinet networks.
The controller architecture is based on standard Profinet Asic Ertec 400 with integrated, real-time-enabled communication.
The Profinet interface relieves the PC processor of communication tasks to increase PC system performance.
This also saves a slot, making it available for other PC expansion cards.
The three Profinet ports allow flexible and simple establishment of linear or ring topologies and are used for connecting PLCs, distributed I/O, or drives to the PC.
Alternatively, with real time communication the ports can be used as standard Windows interfaces for TCP/IP communication, for example, or for visualisation tasks with Simatic WinCC flexible.
The new version of the software PLC WinAC RTX 2008 already uses the communication facilities of the onboard interface.
The network topology is configured with STEP 7 or NCM-PC.
Key contact:
Siemens
iac.sales.au@siemens.com
www.automation.siemens.com