IOTech, the edge software company, announced the general availability of Edge Xrt v2.1, the latest release of its high-performance connectivity solution. Edge Xrt v2.1 is designed for time-critical and embedded OT applications at the 
industrial IoT edge.
Edge Xrt simplifies the development of OT applications and enables faster time-to-market for new edge systems. It is hardware agnostic, independent of the CPU (Intel or ARM) and operating system. Edge Xrt can deploy as a native Linux application, containerized, or embedded as a library into a third-party software stack.
Edge Xrt can concurrently connect to many different OT device endpoints that are using a variety of industrial protocols (such as Modbus, BACnet, OPC UA, EtherCAT and many more), and read/write data from these devices at high volume and very low latency. Normalized data is made available to applications via MQTT/JSON. The new release also adds the ability to normalize the data based on the OPC UA data model that a client application can access via a new OPC UA server component.
The product’s open APIs enables third-party application integration. Major industrial OEMs and ISVs across industry verticals such as smart manufacturing, building management and renewable energy 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.
With its small memory footprint and efficient use of computing resources, Edge Xrt is also suitable for applications where CPU and memory resources are limited, such as connected commercial or consumer electronic devices (e.g. refrigeration units), medical device applications, automotive engine management systems, and microcontroller applications.
The new release adds a number of important features, including:
- An OPC UA Server into which all OT data acquired from Edge Xrt’s extensive range of protocol connectors is aggregated and normalized. Client applications can easily read/write data to any device or equipment via this standard Industry 4.0 compliant interface.
- Extended device discovery capabilities so that EtherNet/IP endpoints can be dynamically discovered and onboarded without the need for users to perform manual configuration, which makes it simple to connect to new equipment.
- 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 across a variety of vertical markets. It also enables integration between the real-time edge applications and higher-level enterprise IT, SCADA and cloud applications.