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About Intel® Edge Controls for Industrial

Intel® Edge Controls for Industrial (Intel® ECI or ECI) is about solving industrial challenges easier. This fundamental goal guides ECI and is the philosophy behind behind every ECI component, tutorial, and so on. The ECI team constantly engages with industrial customers to learn about their challenges and work together to solve them. Here are some learnings and different ways in which ECI can help:

  • Simplicity

    Solutions need to be simple to follow and use. ECI provides simplicity through familiar package management (Deb and RPM packages) and comprehensive documentation.

  • Support

    In the industrial space, the expectation is that the customers would be able to use the solutions for over a decade. The solutions that work today should also work after a decade. ECI provides support through periodic package updates while ensuring continued compatibility with Intel® processors and products.

  • Determinism (Real-time)

    Industrial applications often have complex real-time requirements. Data must be processed and decisions made within a finite time interval. ECI enables determinism through real-time Linux kernels (PREEMPT_RT and Xenomai), verified configurations, and tools to help leverage Intel® silicon features such as Cache Allocation Technology (CAT) and Time Sensitive Networking (TSN).

  • Consolidation

    Industrial use cases often employ Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), and a common trend is converting these hardware-bound PLCs to software PLCs. It is possible to deploy multiple software PLCs and operating systems onto a single compute system to reduce cost by leveraging virtualization. ECI provides consolidation through real-time hypervisors and templates for microservices.

  • Familiar Tools

    ECI builds upon many standard industrial tools, such as commercial software PLCs, Robotic Operating Systems (ROS), PLCopen, CANopen, and so on. By reusing the tools the customers are familiar with, ECI enables immediate access to optimizations and enhancements without needing to redesign or learn new tools.

ECI Versions and Supported Distributions

Intel® Edge Controls for Industrial provides packages and solutions compatible with popular Linux distributions including Debian, Canonical® Ubuntu®, and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® (RHEL). By converging on these Linux distributions, ECI is able to provide a developer-centric environment which aligns well with existing workflows.

_images/distributions.png

Distribution

Distribution Version

ECI Version

v3.2

v3.1

v3.0.2

v3.0.1

v3.0

< Debian >

Debian 12 (Bookworm) .

Debian 11 (Bullseye) .

< Canonical® Ubuntu® >

Canonical® Ubuntu® 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) .

< Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® >

Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 9.3 (Plow) .

ECI Support

Intel® is constantly working towards improving ECI, by providing:

  • Updates to Linux kernels, including PREEMPT_RT and Xenomai variants

  • Support for upcoming Intel® processors and other products

  • Optimizations for libraries and tools running on Intel® processors

  • Fixes for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs)

  • Validation on previous generation processors to ensure continued compatibility

  • New features and enhancements

To learn more about the upcoming features of ECI, refer to the ECI feature roadmap.

ECI License

Usage of Intel® Edge Controls for Industrial is permitted under the terms of the Intel® Edge Controls for Industrial Software License Agreement.

ECI Features

The following are the key features of ECI. Click each feature to learn about the related components:


Time Deterministic Compute

Keeps industrial processes working predictably with deterministic compute


Workload Convergence

Uses virtualization and containerization configurations to consolidate mixed-criticality workloads


Application and Platform Management

Enables zero-downtime updates and enhanced maintainability, with increased flexibility due to real-time workload orchestration


Infrastructure Management

Scales control node clusters with software-defined infrastructure, including network, storage, and CPU


Industrial Connectivity

Bridges brownfield and greenfield communication technologies to achieve a complete edge-to-cloud solution


Controls Application

Offers production-verified and standards-compliant controls samples to simplify production and deployment


ECI Technology Domains

ECI provides packages for Debian 12 (Bookworm), Canonical® Ubuntu® 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish), and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 9.3 (Plow). By installing ECI packages into an existing environment, you can quickly bring solutions to a multitude of technology domains. The following table lists the components grouped based on the technology domain they pertain to.

Click each link to learn more.

Domain

ECI Components and Features

Hypervisor

Domain

GNU/Linux KVM Hypervisor and Upstream Virtualization Tools

Real-Time Systems Hypervisor (RTH) and Tools

Project ACRN Hypervisor, Device Model, APIs, and Tools

Kernel

Domain

Linux Intel LTS kernel

Linux Intel LTS PREEMPT_RT kernel

XENOMAI Dovetail Co-kernel

Connectivity

Domain

Intel® Edge Control Protocol Bridge and Plugins

IEC-62541 OPC UA Framework and DX Resources

IEC-60802 TSN Endstation Profiles and DX Resources

FM350-GL Linux driver and 5G DX Resources

AX210 Linux driver & WiFi 6E DX Resources

SoftPLC

Domain

CODESYS* IEC61131-3 Control and DX Resources

Universal Automation (IEC61499) / Schneider Electric EcoStruxure Automation Expert Control and DX Resources

IEC-61158 EtherCAT Master and DX Resources

IEC-61131-3 (part 1 and 2) Motion Control DX Resources

IEC-50325-4 CANopen for Automation (CiA301)

Realtime Optimization

Domain

Benchmarking & Performance Characterization Real-time Suite and Timeview-UI

Intel® TCC Tools and DX Resources

Linux XDP/eBPF and DX Resources

Real-time Data Agent/Broker DX Resources

Application

Domain

Container Runtime and ECI Configs (dockerd)

Intel® Edge Insights for Industrial (Intel® EII)

Robot Operating System (ROS2)

Intel® Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0

Intel® oneAPI APT Repo Source (apt.repos.intel.com)

Infrastructure

Domain

Intel® In-Band Manageability .

ECI Industrial Applications

ECI is very flexible and can be applied to a wide range of applications and end equipment:

Process automation (such as oil and gas industry)

ECI allows control execution to be managed as containerized microservices. Using advanced orchestration techniques, the platform also improves redundancy with increased workload availability and portability.

Equipment manufacturers

ECI makes it possible to consolidate motion and logic control and provides a local user interface to monitor processes and enable supervisory controls. A platform management agent simplifies software updates and application provisioning.

Discrete automation (such as automotive manufacturing)

ECI enables low-latency motion control and puts safety first. Using a fully managed infrastructure, the platform can securely onboard new nodes and update software.

Robotics Control

ECI adds Robot Operating System (ROS2) software to Discrete automation for easy integration with existing robotic applications.

How ECI Achieves Determinism

Determinism is defined as the ability to operate with a predictable outcome. In the context of the Linux kernel, this means that applications can run without experiencing spurious interrupts, which enables them to achieve consistent real-time performance.

At its core, ECI is an optimized Linux kernel with specific configurations to enable real-time workloads to operate deterministically. This is accomplished by the following:

Specification

Description

Optimized Linux* kernel

ECI provides an optimized Linux Intel LTS PREEMPT_RT kernel for real-time workloads. For a list of kernel configurations and boot parameters used to optimize the Linux kernel, refer to ECI Kernel Configuration Optimizations and ECI Kernel Boot Optimizations.

Cache Allocation Technology

ECI leverages an Intel® silicon feature called Cache Allocation Technology which helps address shared resource concerns by providing software control of where data is allocated into the last-level cache (LLC), enabling isolation and prioritization of key applications.

CPU Isolation

By default, all Linux kernel processes are scheduled to run on CPU 0 and CPUs 1 & 3 (13th generation processors and older) or 2 & 4 (14th generation processors and newer) are configured to be isolated for real-time usage.

Network interrupt affinity to CPU

ECI Network Interrupts Affinity to CPU recommends to selectively move critical Ethernet device interrupts. for prioritized traffic-class onto a CPU other than CPU 0.

Tickless kernel

ECI builds the Linux kernel to be tickless. With a tickless kernel, timer interrupts do not occur at regular intervals, but are only delivered as required. This minimizes the number of kernel interrupts to the minimum required.

Persistent C-States and CPU frequency

ECI builds the Linux kernel to maintain persistent CPU power/frequency state. With this configuration, the CPU never reduces clock speed, remaining at a single frequency to consistently process real-time workloads.

ECI Packages and Installation Images

ECI is available to you via packages and installation images. Deb packages are available for Debian and Canonical® Ubuntu®, while RPM packages are available for Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®. Click each tab to learn more.

logo_debian logo_ubuntu

ECI focuses on four industrial applications, and includes the following use cases:

  • eci-process-automation

  • eci-manufacturing-equipment

  • eci-discrete-manufacturing

  • eci-robotics-control

To instantiate these use cases quickly, ECI provides Deb packages for Debian and Canonical® Ubuntu®. For a complete list of ECI Deb packages, refer to ECI Packages Lists. The high-level Deb packages, also referred to as meta-packages, do not contain any distributable assets, but have install-time dependencies on other packages.

The following figure illustrates the dependencies of ECI meta-packages (high-level Deb packages) on various domains:

_images/meta-packages.png

Attention

The Use Case and Domain-specific meta-packages install a collection of Deb packages. They do not configure the system, instantiate any applications, or turn the system into a ready-to-use solution. Do not install these meta-packages with the expectation that the system will be completely ready for deployment.

See also

For a complete list of ECI Deb packages, refer to ECI Packages Lists.

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