Beckhoff Automation has introduced a new industrial server, representing one of the most powerful controllers in the market.
The fact that centralised control system architectures have numerous advantages over distributed methodologies is well proven. With modern production lines and high-performance, standalone machines incorporating ever increasing functionality with ever shorter cycle times, increasingly powerful, central control systems are required.
The new C6670 industrial server from Beckhoff can be equipped with 12, 24 or 36 processor cores and its memory is expandable from 64 GB up to 2 TB. Using the TwinCAT 3.1 automation software platform from Beckhoff, each individual core can be leveraged to the maximum to effectively utilise the immense computing power of the C6670.
Beckhoff’s ‘many-core control’ concept complies with the company’s consistent and long-term philosophy of centralised control with integrated Scientific Automation. This means that in addition to the machine’s control functions of PLC, motion, robotics, and CNC, additional functions such as advanced measurement technology, condition monitoring, and visualisation are all integrated into one powerful software package, TwinCAT, and executed on one powerful CPU.
TwinCAT 3.1 allows optimal utilisation of all available processor cores by intelligently distributing individual control tasks among them. With the new C6670 industrial servers, Beckhoff delivers the benefits of many-core technology to machine control projects, allowing the user’s application ideas to be realised by dramatically faster and more powerful machine control platforms.
The first industrial server from Beckhoff, the C6670 can be used for computationally-intensive control technology as well as for complex robotics or image processing applications, and is designed for cabinet installation. Key features include two Intel Xeon processors, each with 6, 12 or 18 cores; motherboard with two Gigabit Ethernet controllers and a powerful graphics card; massive performance levels delivered by up to 2 TB DDR4 RAM; and four PCIe x16 Gen III slots, one PCIe Gen III x 8 slot and one PCIe Gen II x 4 slot for multiple interface cards and maximum flexibility.