Rockwell Automation, Wind River sign license agreement

Gary A. Mintchell, senior editor -- Control Engineering, 11/1/2001

Milwaukee, Wis. and Alameda, Calif. - Rockwell Automation and Wind River Systems Inc. October 31 announced an agreement to integrate EtherNet/Industrial Protocol (IP) technology-based on Rockwell Automation's EtherNet/IP Master Library-and Wind River's Tornado for Industrial Automation development software. The partnership will benefit the industrial automation industry by simplifying the development of a wide range of EtherNet/IP-enabled industrial devices such as controllers, I/O, drives, robots, weigh scales, operator interfaces, supervisory control stations, and more.

'Wind River is the worldwide leader in real-time operating systems and embedded development tools for the industrial automation market,' says Jack DeLeon, strategic marketing director of Rockwell Automation's Automation, Control, and Information Group. 'From our own experience of developing EtherNet/IP-based devices using Wind River technologies, the integration of EtherNet/IP will significantly accelerate the ability of developers to bring highly functional and efficient EtherNet/IP-enabled devices to the market.'

'Wind River sees EtherNet/IP technology as an integral part of our rapidly broadening connectivity strategy for industrial devices,' said Scot Morrison, vice president and general manager of Wind River's Automotive and Industrial business unit. 'Rockwell Automation is the key supplier of Ethernet/IP technology and products in the industrial automation market and Wind River is pleased to extend our longstanding relationship with Rockwell to deliver a complete software development solution for this important market. Tornado for Industrial Automation customers will find developing industrial applications with market-leading connectivity much easier and more cost effective.'

The emergence of Ethernet connectivity on the factory floor has been enabled by its increasing speed and reduced deployment cost. To leverage these benefits and ensure interoperability of industrial devices, EtherNet/IP uses the same standard application layer, common object model, and universal device profiles as DeviceNet and ControlNet. The EtherNet/IP specification is maintained by the Open DeviceNet Vendor Association (ODVA), of which both Wind River and Rockwell Automation are members.

The EtherNet/IP Master Library is a communication stack that provides the developer with a complete set of functions to give Control and Information Protocol (CIP) connectivity over TCP/IP as defined in the EtherNet/IP specification. These functions allow implementation of an EtherNet/IP product, without requiring detailed knowledge of the Ethernet protocol.

Tornado for Industrial Automation is a vertical solution for the development of industrial automation devices. It is comprised of the Tornado integrated development environment, VxWorks real-time operating system, embedded development tools, and industrial automation specific networking protocols including Wind River DeviceNet and OLE for Process Control (OPC) implementation. Tornado for Industrial Automation is designed to shift the focus of embedded industrial device developers from the integration of enabling technologies to the development of the application itself-thus resulting in faster time to market.