TwinCAT/BSD Hypervisor Provides Efficient Engineering and Execution of Virtual Machines
January 13, 2022
News
TwinCAT/BSD Hypervisor, a new feature of the TwinCAT/BSD operating system from Beckhoff, enables simultaneous execution of virtual machines and TwinCAT real-time applications on an Industrial PC (IPC).
Optimized hypervisor integration in TwinCAT/BSD, plus matching configurations of Beckhoff hardware and software, is designed to provide maximum performance for virtual machines – often called VMs – while maintaining TwinCAT real-time properties for automation.
The high-performance execution of virtual machines means different operating systems can be utilized on one IPC so users can take advantage of the features and strengths of each. In addition, users can enhance the security properties of the overall system by operating user environments in a modular and isolated manner. For example, TwinCAT real-time applications can operate separately from a Windows desktop environment for machine operation on an IPC. In this context, the Windows operating system runs in a virtual machine environment. Therefore, when Windows restarts, e.g., due to software updates, it will not interrupt machine control execution. This ensures optimal machine availability since Windows only restarts within the virtual machine environment and TwinCAT continues to run in the real-time context supported by the TwinCAT/BSD host.
Through the device passthrough feature of TwinCAT/BSD Hypervisor, hardware resources such as the GPU, USB ports, and/or network interfaces can be explicitly assigned to a virtual machine. In this way, access to the TwinCAT/BSD system by user and/or network interfaces can be limited, creating opportunities to boost control system security.
TwinCAT/BSD Hypervisor supports operation of Linux distributions on the controller in addition to Windows, such as for running Linux containers, for example. In this case, host-only networks support data communication between Linux containers and the machine controller. This ensures that unencrypted network communication will only take place locally between TwinCAT/BSD and the Linux container host, and confidential machine data does not leave the IPC.
For more information, visit: www.beckhoff.com
Tiera Oliver is the assistant managing editor at Embedded Computing Design. She is responsible for web content editing, product news, and story development. She also manages, edits, and develops content for ECD podcasts, including Embedded Insiders.
She utilizes her expertise in journalism and content management to oversee editorial content, coordinate with editors, and ensure high-quality output across web, print, and multimedia platforms. She manages diverse projects, assists in the production of digital magazines, and hosts company podcasts by conducting in-depth interviews with industry leaders to deliver engaging and insightful discussions.
Tiera attended Northern Arizona University, where she received her bachelor's in journalism and political science. She was also a news reporter for the student-led newspaper, The Lumberjack.
