IOTech Announces a Major New Release of Edge XRT, its Software Platform for Time-critical OT Systems

IOTech, the edge software company, announced the general availability of Edge XRT v2.0. This is a major release of its open software platform designed for time-critical and embedded OT applications at the industrial IoT edge.

Edge XRT 2.0 greatly simplifies the development of OT applications and enables faster time-to-market for new edge systems. It is hardware agnostic, independent of the silicon provider (Intel or ARM) and operating system. Users have complete deployment flexibility. They can deploy it as a native application, containerized, and/or into a virtualized environment.

With its small memory footprint and efficient use of computing resources, Edge XRT 2.0 is also suitable for microcontroller-based applications where CPU and memory resources are limited. This makes it ideal for use cases such as connected commercial or consumer electronic devices (e.g., refrigeration unit), medical device applications, or automotive engine management systems.

The product’s open APIs make third-party application integration very easy. Major industrial OEMs and ISVs are leveraging the product’s multi-vendor OT connectivity, cloud interoperability and high-performance, real-time edge processing capabilities to create a new generation of protocol-agnostic edge solutions.

The new release adds several important features including:

• OT connectivity: In addition to the existing pluggable OT connectivity for Modbus, EtherNet/IP and EtherCAT, BACnet and OPC UA protocols, the platform now supports PROFINET, S7, GPS and BLE.
• For protocols that support device discovery, such as OPC UA, BACnet and EtherNet/IP, devices can be discovered and then onboarded easily without any manual configuration.   
• A new MQTT API allows Edge XRT clients to easily manage the lifecycle of connected device/sensors, support read/write OT data access, control device discovery and resource scheduling.
• When deployed on an Azure Sphere device, an Edge XRT application can now be dynamically configured and reconfigured via a Device Twin running on Azure IoT Hub.
• IOTech has made scalability and performance improvements to address customer demand for concurrent access to an increasing number of OT devices and their data.   

Edge XRT is designed for high-performance edge computing use cases, such as industrial control and real-time signal processing applications across a variety of vertical markets. These include factory automation, renewable energy, building management, retail, and hospitality. It also enables integration between the real-time edge applications and higher-level enterprise IT, SCADA, and cloud applications.