PC-based control can provide high-performance direct control as well as supervisory control and data acquisition. By taking advantage of the economies of scale and the rapid advances in microcomputer technology; PC-based control can provide true distributed control capabilities at a cost competitive with programmable logic controllers (PLCs). However, concerns about reliability; particularly in mission-critical industrial applications, have delayed acceptance of PC-based control. The design of I/O systems and software used for PC-based control can provide hardware fault tolerance through redundancy and software fault tolerance using microkernel design principles.
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