Simplifying the Development of Real-time Industrial Edge Systems

Edge XRT is a fully integrated and commercially-licensed extension of the Linux Foundation’s EdgeX Foundry platform that enables the EdgeX ecosystem to support the full spectrum of secure hard and soft real-time Edge Computing requirements.

Edge XRT provides a powerful IoT Edge Computing platform supporting key requirements such as dynamic edge data processing and the integration of multiple different southbound OT and northbound IT/Cloud endpoints. Edge XRT delivers these capabilities, however, whilst also supporting the following key non-functional properties:

• Small memory footprint (e.g. less than 100 KB)
• Ultra-low latency data processing (e.g. less than 100 microseconds)
• Predictable and deterministic real-time execution
• Legacy hardware and/or operating systems

Edge XRT is targeted at high-performance edge applications such as industrial control, high-frequency signal processing and real-time analytics in different vertical markets including factory automation, oil and gas, utilities, autonomous systems and smart energy. It also enables integration between the real-time edge control systems and higher-level SCADA applications.

Edge XRT Benefits

Simplified Real-time Development

Simplifies real-time development and provides application portability, improved supportability, delivering faster time-to-market and ease of product evolution 

Reusable Infrastructure

Provides productized reusable real-time infrastructure (e.g. real-time thread prioritization and scheduling) allowing users to focus on value-add applications

Optimized Performance

Written in C for portability, small footprint and low latency performance

Complete Deployment Flexibility

Can be deployed as a native executable application or containerized (e.g. docker) and/or into a virtualized environment 

Runs on Any Device

A platform-independent solution that runs on any silicon, operating system (with POSIX-like support) and hardware

Application Portability

Standard application framework and reusable components increases application portability and re-use across different use cases

Standard Connectivity

Provides pluggable “out-of-the-box” for many of the most common Southbound OT (e.g. Modbus, OPC UA etc.) and Northbound IT (e.g. Multi-Cloud, MQTT, REST) communication technologies

Supports Industry Standard

Compatible with emerging industry standards such as IEC6113 and 61499

Edge XRT Key Features:

• Loosely-coupled microservices architecture deployed in a lightweight single address space microcontainer
• Real-Time Core processing engine allowing for the pluggable deployment of user components and analytics at run-time
• Implemented in the C programming language so is extremely lightweight, fast and portable
• Integration with multiple OT device endpoints including Modbus, BACnet, MQTT, OPC UA, BLE, Zigbee, EtherCAT, PROFINET and many more
• Integration with multiple IT/Cloud endpoints including AWS, Google Cloud IOT, Microsoft Azure and many more
• Integration to EdgeX Foundry and Edge Xpert for more comprehensive Edge IoT processing