Red Hat has announced a new industrial edge platform designed together with Intel to provide a modern approach to building and operating industrial controls. ABB, Schneider Electric and Codesys are among companies collaborating with the two partners to build new industrial edge platforms for industrial automation.

The new platform will scale standard IT technologies for real-time plant floor operations and data insights, enabling industrial control system vendors, system integrators and manufacturers to automate previously manual industrial automation tasks. These include: system development, deployment and management, cybersecurity risk reduction, prescriptive and predictive maintenance improvements for factory agility, co-locating deterministic and non-deterministic workloads and reducing turnaround time.

The industrial edge platform is intended to provide a holistic solution that spans from real-time shop floor control and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) to full IT manageability – delivering greater customer choice for data gravity or edge-to-cloud style architectures and improved overall equipment efficiency (OEE).

To support this effort on a continuing basis, Red Hat and Intel are working to integrate Intel-based platforms and Intel Edge Controls for Industrial (Intel ECI) with current and future versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, starting with collaboration in upstream Linux communities like the Fedora Project and CentOS Stream. Their collaboration extends to bringing these controls and platforms to Red Hat Device Edge (early access), Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat OpenShift.

The cornerstone of the project will be a real-time kernel jointly developed by Red Hat and Intel to provide lower latency and reduced jitter, helping applications run repeatedly with greater reliability. The industrial edge platform will be built on open standards and community-driven innovation. Core code transparency and a clear roadmap and release cycle will provide industrial planners with greater clarity.

The collaboration will provide:

• Fully integrated real-time capabilities from silicon to software, to support industrial automation for predictable performance;
• Advanced management and network automation for system deployment and management without heavy handed resource usage, simplifying the industrial network creation and management using open standards-based tools;
• Scalability and flexibility through a software-defined platform approach that enables more portable, scalable control and maximises adaptability;
• Uninterrupted operations supported by high-availability and redundancy attributes built-in with the platform;
• Simplified AI workload integration with the ability to take an AI workload and run it next to a control workload, helping simplify hardware complexity, and enabling AI to more easily improve product quality, system uptime, maintenance needs and more;
• Enhanced cybersecurity posture by removing human error elements with automated patching and updates, an immutable operating system plane and a platform built on hardened, production-tested components.

The two companies believe that organisations will benefit from an open edge platform and simplified integration of components for industrial automation. ABB, Schneider Electric and Codesys are among companies are collaborating with Intel and Redhat on building new industrial edge platforms for modern industrial controls.

Francis Chow, vice president and general manager, In-Vehicle Operating System and Edge, Red Hat, said: “From transforming traditional IT infrastructures to helping software-defined vehicles deliver scalable digital solutions across industrial edge, Red Hat has a proven history in driving not just modernisation across industries, but innovation. Now, Red Hat has set our sights on bringing that same level of transformation to manufacturing plants across the globe with a new edge platform with Intel. We believe that by helping converge both IT and operational technologies, the next industrial revolution can arrive sooner, more quickly and built on a backbone of open source software.”

Christine Boles, vice president in the network and edge group and general manager of federal and industrial solutions, Intel Corporation, said: “For years, Intel and Red Hat have worked together to transform and support a range of industries. Bringing together Red Hat’s expertise in cloud-to-edge application platform delivery and Intel’s strength in edge to cloud compute platforms, including industrial hardware and software, will deliver the software-defined capabilities and transformation to meet the resilient, flexible and reliable requirements of today’s manufacturing.”