Wind

Virtualisation and the Internet of Things

Whitepapers

Industrial control devices have been around for years. The initial devices were manufactured with a personality, a business logic that was already built in when they left the manufacturing plant to perform one fixed function (and nothing else). They were deployed for specific tasks such as controlling industrial equipment, electricity generation, power plants, trains, planes, or automobiles.

But times have changed. Today, devices are shipped comparatively bare and are then given a personality through software download from USB devices, flash cards, or other programming over some form of connection. These more generic devices can be manufactured with a limited set of functionality and given more content during deployment by a system integrator.

Responding to and driving these developments, technology for industrial control devices has also changed dramatically in recent years – from 8bit to 64bit processors, from microcontrollers to multi-core – and now the Internet of Things (IoT) is changing the game again. As device manufacturers aim to take advantage of the opportunities created by IoT, one new technology is embedded virtualisation. This whitepaper discusses how embedded virtualisation enables the device flexibility and security required for IoT.

http://www.windriver.com/uk/