Design and implementation of optimal soft-programmable logic controller on multicore processor

Abstract

In the present industrial world, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are playing a vital role. A Programmable Logic Controller is a solid state user programmable control system with functions to control logic, sequencing, timing, arithmetic data manipulation and counting capabilities. As the applications are becoming more and more complex, the single-core PLCs are unable to meet the high speed execution requirements, so there is a need for high performance PLCs. Scan time is one of the important parameter which determines the performance of PLC. This paper presents an Optimal Software PLC (Soft-PLC) developed using python programming language which runs on multicore processor. The key feature of this Soft-PLC is the identification and parallel execution of independent rungs of ladder logic on multiple core. Our Soft-PLC provides high speed execution and low scan time compared to PLCs which run on single core processor.