(Click here for a larger view of Hilscher's cifX card)Available in PCI, PCI Express, CompactPCI, and Mini PCI versions, the cifX cards offer determinism, minimal jitter, and a line topology -- all prerequisites for real-time Ethernet, according to Hilscher. The protocols supported by the cards are supplied on a CD as loadable firmware, and include
EtherCAT,
EtherNet/IP,
Profinet and Profinet IO,
Modbus TCP/IP,
Powerlink controlled node/slave, and
Sercos III.
As for INtime, this is intended to be installed on a x86-based system that already runs standard Windows. It runs as a separate, independent kernel, so that the Windows system is not modified or compromised by any process failures and faults on the INtime kernel, Tenasys says. Real-time processes run on the INtime kernel, and non-real-time processes run on Windows.
According to Tenasys, INtime provides direct access to PCI devices from real-time applications. Additionally, IRQ conflicts are eliminated by making use of PCI's Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) feature. This is said to eliminate the determinism problems associated with having to share interrupts among multiple I/O devices.
Further informationAvailability information was not provided regarding the INTime driver for Hilscher's cifX cards, though it appears to be obtainable now. For more information on INtime, see our previous coverage,
here. For more information on the Hilscher cifX cards, see the company's website,
here.
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