POWERLINK protocol stacks in the future
Article from the German magazine Markt & Technik
in the column "focus - automation", September 5, 2008
Picture: Schematic view of IXXAT's
POWERLINK protocol stack
Since SysTec electronic released the open source POWERLINK protocol stack at the 2008 Hanover Fair, vendors offering commercial POWERLINK stacks have been confronted with new market conditions. Now, more than ever, they have to provide additional value in the form of special functionality and services. However, according to reports, the commercial stack providers do not feel threatened by the open source protocol stack.
»Everyone using the open source stack has to either struggle through the implementation on their own, or obtain support services from SysTec, which are not available for free« says Christian Schlegel, managing director of IXXAT Automation, a company focused on high performance industrial communication solutions.
»It is very doubtful that a customer will have a financial advantage when using the open source stack, considering the price of our stack already includes integration support.« For IXXAT's business with commercial POWERLINK stacks Christian Schlegel doesn't yet see a clear trend. »At the moment we can't tell whether or how the availability of the open source stack will have an effect on our POWERLINK stack business.«
Despite the competitive open source stack, Christian Schlegel is optimistic regarding the future market potential of IXXAT's commercial stack: »Our stack is faster than the open source stack, due to our optimized implementation of data processing«. »Also, we offer several additional features, such as the Configuration Manager, which extend the functional coverage of our stack.« The company is located in the south of Germany and recently released version 1.04.05 of its POWERLINK stack. This version corresponds to the latest POWERLINK specification DS 1.0.0 and offers the following new features:
- Node monitoring of Controlled Nodes (CN) via object 0x1016
- Support of all priority levels on the Managing Node (MN) for allocation of the asynchronous communication channels
- Support of all mandatory objects and many optional objects according to the POWERLINK specification DS 1.0.0
- Modification of the Node-ID via the object directory during runtime
- GUI-based Stack Configuration Tool for the scaling and generation of the IXXAT POWERLINK software (mainly static parameters and the object dictionary)
- Switching between MN/CN functionality during runtime by changing the Node-ID
- Bug fixes and adaptations for higher compatibility with implementations from other vendors
»Many well known OEMs use the IXXAT POWERLINK stack in their products, so it is often considered as the POWERLINK reference implementation« said Christian Schlegel. According to IXXAT, it is the only software available on the market which comes with a Configuration Manager, enabling the automatic check and update of the network configuration by the Managing Node and reducing the application code required to boot the network. Using the Stack Configuration Tool, the Managing Node can be configured off-line to manage the configuration files of all Controlled Nodes via the object dictionary.
To ensure a high performance POWERLINK implementation, the stack is prepared for integration with various Ethernet controllers at the hardware level. The integrated memory management function is especially interesting for embedded systems, by managing both configuration data and application data, within non-volatile memory (e.g. flash). The implementation of protocol extensions such as "high availability" and "multi messaging" is already planned, and will be offered as optional packages depending on availability.
The new version of IXXAT's POWERLINK stack is also available as an IP core enabling FPGA based development of high performance Managing and Controlled Nodes. This version is implemented on the IXXAT Industrial Ethernet Module, the POWERLINK PCI Board PL-IB300/PCI and the POWERLINK/CANopen Gateway.