Congatec and Codesys Group
Strategic partnership for virtualized real-time control
Congatec, a vendor of embedded and edge computing technology, and Codesys Group, a provider of hardware-independent control software, announced the initiation of a strategic cooperation.
The partnership is set to deliver highly integrated virtualized real-time control platforms for mixed critical workloads. Such multifunctional platforms with workload consolidation bring a new level of flexibility and efficiency to industrial automation.
The strategic alliance is set to combine Congatec’s »aReady.VT« virtualization technology with the Codesys Control runtime system. The goal is to transform industrial controllers into fully-fledged IEC 61131-3 PLCs for essential automation tasks, purely through software. To achieve this, the hypervisor »conga-zones« from Congatec separates the embedded computing platform into different zones. General purpose operating systems run in parallel with Codesys PLC-based real-time control in dedicated zones, ensuring both deterministic real-time behavior and secure isolation on one system. The combination of the conga-zones hypervisor and Codesys PLC delivers the reliability, virtualization flexibility and deterministic performance that are crucial as the industry moves towards control technology virtualization.
"Our partnership with Codesys unites Congatec’s conga-zones hypervisor and the Codesys PLC, bringing customers an easy-to-install, cost-effective solution that runs on standard hardware while ensuring robust real-time performance and isolation," says Konrad Garhammer, COO and CTO at Congatec. "Our hypervisor technology enables the seamless operation of various operating systems alongside the Codesys PLC in industrial applications, providing a new level of flexibility, efficiency and reliability for automation and robotics."
Hilmar Panzer, CTO of the Codesys Group, adds: "Virtualization of control technology is an important trend for optimizing the cost, scalability and security of embedded control platforms. At embedded world, we presented a demo using Congatec’s conga-zones hypervisor to showcase this concept, which we are now set to bring to realization."
