PhilipW
Member
On a more interesting note note than AD/AB bickering, I spot that Rockwell are making public their plans to use the new Intel IXP 465 chips in their next generation of products, and Rockwell are referenced by Intel as having some input to the design objectives of it. This represents an interesting shift of practise for Rockwell who have until now pretty much relied on ASIC chips for their hardware.
Clearly there are two things to be gleaned from this; one is that the next generation of product will have a lot of native connectivity in forms we don't currently associate with PLC's, and the fact that they are willing to publically make statements about it means that at least the first versions could be only a year or two off.
I thought to look up the IXP465 chips and they look fairly interesting, combining a lot of processing power with a lot of of high speed IO devices, ie up to six emebedded Ethernet ports. Here's the Intel page on the critter complete with a link to video clip from an RA type blurbing on about it: IXP465
Clearly there are two things to be gleaned from this; one is that the next generation of product will have a lot of native connectivity in forms we don't currently associate with PLC's, and the fact that they are willing to publically make statements about it means that at least the first versions could be only a year or two off.
I thought to look up the IXP465 chips and they look fairly interesting, combining a lot of processing power with a lot of of high speed IO devices, ie up to six emebedded Ethernet ports. Here's the Intel page on the critter complete with a link to video clip from an RA type blurbing on about it: IXP465
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