PTO, Interbus Club working group to migrate Interbus to Profinet

Profibus Trade Organization (PTO) reports that its parent organization, Profibus International, has formed a joint cooperative working group with the Interbus Club to migrate Interbus fieldbus protocol to Profinet. The working group is chaired by Phoenix Contact's Dr. Juergen Jasparneite.

By Staff April 1, 2004

Profibus Trade Organization (PTO) reports that its parent organization, Profibus International, has formed a joint cooperative working group with the Interbus Club to migrate Interbus fieldbus protocol to Profinet. The working group is chaired by Phoenix Contact’s Dr. Juergen Jasparneite.

The working group is preparing a specification that will adapt the Profinet “proxy” concept to allow migration of Interbus systems into Profinet architectures, and will also include the required engineering. A draft specification of the proxy is expected by September 2004.

Edgar Kuester, Profibus International’s chairman, and Michael Bryant, PTO’s executive director, told Control Engineering that Profibus had more than 10 million installed nodes by the end of 2003, and that combining this base with Interbus’ 6.5 million nodes will gives Profinet the largest installed base of all fieldbus solutions feeding into one Ethernet solution. They are inviting other fieldbus protocols to choose Profinet as their Ethernet-level solution.

Officially launched on March 22, Profinet is an Ethernet-based automation solution designed to provide a scalable, high-performance migration path to industrial Ethernet. Kuester adds that Profinet provides Ethernet migration not only for Profibus, but for other fieldbus systems as well.

In other news, the U.S.-based organization for technical support and training services, PTO, marked its 10th anniversary.

Meanwhile, Profibus International, with 1,500 members, expects its installed nodes to double to 20 million by 2008.