IOTech, the edge software company, announced the general availability of Edge Xrt v2.1, the latest release of its high performance connectivity solution. It is designed for time-critical and embedded OT applications at the industrial IoT edge.
Edge Xrt greatly simplifies the development of OT applications and enables faster time-to-market for new edge systems. It is hardware agnostic, independent of the silicon provider (Intel or ARM) and operating system. Users have complete deployment flexibility. They can deploy it as a native Linux application, containerized or even embedded as a library into a third-party software stack.
Edge Xrt can concurrently connect to many different OT device endpoints that are using a variety of industrial protocols (such as Modbus, BACnet, OPC UA, EtherCAT and many more), and read/write data from these devices at high volume and very low latency. Normalized data is made available to applications via MQTT/JSON. The new release also adds the ability to normalize the data based on the OPC UA data model that a client application can access via a new OPC UA server component. OPC UA has become the de-facto communication standard for Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing systems.
The product’s open APIs make third-party application integration very easy. Major industrial OEMs and ISVs across industry verticals such as smart manufacturing, building management and renewable energy are leveraging the product’s multi-vendor OT connectivity, cloud interoperability and high-performance, real-time edge processing capabilities to create a new generation of protocol-agnostic edge solutions.
With its small memory footprint and efficient use of computing resources, Edge Xrt is also suitable for applications where CPU and memory resources are limited. This makes it ideal for use cases such as connected commercial or consumer electronic devices (e.g. refrigeration units), medical device applications, automotive engine management systems, and microcontroller applications.
“With its configurable, high-performance and embeddable connectivity capabilities, Edge Xrt is unique in its ability to serve the needs of the growing industrial IoT market,” said Andrew Foster, product director at IOTech. “It provides a rich set of OT connectivity capabilities that make it easy for our customers to access their valuable industrial data. In most cases, this is through simple configuration or dynamic device discovery and without the need for custom code.”
The new release adds a number of important features, including:
- An OPC UA Server into which all OT data acquired from Edge Xrt’s extensive range of protocol connectors is aggregated and normalized. Client applications can easily read/write data to any device or equipment via this standard Industry 4.0 compliant interface.
- Extended device discovery capabilities so that EtherNet/IP endpoints can be dynamically discovered and onboarded without the need for users to perform manual configuration, which makes it simple to connect to new equipment.
- Scalability and performance improvements to address customer demand for concurrent access to an increasing number of OT devices and their data.
Edge Xrt is designed for high-performance edge computing use cases across a variety of vertical markets. It also enables integration between the real-time edge applications and higher-level enterprise IT, SCADA and cloud applications.
For more information: Edge Xrt.
About IOTech
IOTech develops market leading open edge computing and management software products for the edge infrastructure market. Our software products are embedded into the edge solution offerings of major OEMs, ISVs and Systems Integrators. We are their solution of choice because we provide the capability to accelerate the development, deployment, and management at scale of edge applications within their customer base. Our growing list of channel partners includes Schneider Electric, Accenture, Johnson Controls, Mitsubishi Power, Intel, and more. We have established a strong reputation within the industrial edge ecosystem thanks to our early involvement and material contributions to EdgeX Foundry, the largest open-source edge software platform (10 million+ downloads).
