Open-source technology provider Red Hat, which developed a commercial distribution of Linux for enterprise use, has collaborated with Intel to design an industrial edge platform to provide a new approach to building and operating industrial controls.
By transforming the way manufacturers operate, scale and innovate with standard IT technologies delivered to the plant floor and real-time data insights, the platform is designed to enable industrial-control-system (ICS) suppliers, system integrators (SIs) and manufacturers to automate previously manual industrial automation tasks including 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.
“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 modernization across industries, but innovation,” said Francis Chow, vice president and general manager, In-Vehicle Operating System and Edge, Red Hat. “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.”
Smart factories, or software-defined factories, are playing a crucial role in amplifying the speed at which manufacturers can innovate. By breaking down the barriers between information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT), manufacturers can embrace collaboration with new functionality and proactively strengthen and speed up operations, with the flexibility and intelligence to scale based on demand.
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. It’s designed to deliver greater customer choice for data gravity or edge-to-cloud style architectures and improved overall equipment efficiency (OEE).
“For years, Intel and Red Hat have worked together to transform and support a range of industries,” noted Christine Boles, vice president in the network and edge group and general manager of federal and industrial solutions, Intel. “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.”
To continuously support this effort, 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. This collaboration extends to bringing these controls and platforms to Red Hat Device Edge with early access, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat OpenShift. With this collaboration, Red Hat believes organizations could benefit from:
• 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 facilitates more portable, scalable control and maximizes 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 and maintenance needs
• 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.
To underpin this platform, Red Hat, in collaboration with Intel, promises to deliver a real-time kernel that provides lower latency and reduced jitter, helping applications run repeatedly with greater reliability. This industrial edge platform will be built on open standards and community-driven innovation, driven by thousands of developers globally, helping to drive more simplified integration with other hardware and software components, according to Red Hat. Additionally, core code transparency and a clear roadmap and release cycle are designed to take the guesswork out of when new releases are available and their accompanying features.
