Beyond controllers and capacitors

摘要

Industrial automation requires a high degree of reliability, and this requirement extends to the computing hardware and software needed to run automated systems. High availability has been designed into low-level system components such as embedded controllers for many years. But today's automated equipment is expected to perform new tasks--such as communicating information to back-end databases--as part of an increasingly integrated and intelligent infrastructure. A car maker, for example, might need to record the torque value for each screw used during airbag installation and send that information to the company's database. If the data becomes corrupted en route, causing a fault in the system, the consequences can be serious. To find out why the manufacturing process is not meeting specifications, the factory might have to shut down the production line while technicians troubleshoot the problem. For some processes, such as pharmaceutical manufacturing, corrupted data can mean an entire batch of manufactured material must be discarded.