industrial//industrial data layer//IPC

An **Industrial PC** is a ruggedized computer, fanless, DIN-rail or panel mounted, rated for cabinet temperatures and vibration, that runs the software of the edge. It is the usual hardware of an edge gateway and of edge AI.

An Industrial PC is a ruggedized computer, fanless, DIN-rail or panel mounted, rated for cabinet temperatures and vibration, that runs the software of the edge. It is the usual hardware of an edge gateway and of edge AI.

A large plant distributes many of them rather than one giant central server: line 1 has its IPC, line 2 its own, line 3 its own. That is what N IPCs means in an architecture drawing, and it keeps a line's data path alive when another line's node is down.

With a real-time Linux (PREEMPT_RT) or a commercial real-time runtime, an IPC also coordinates machines: it acts as EtherCAT master for a set of servo axes at 1 kHz while running vision and communications on the same box, cycles of 0.1 to 10 ms on 10 to 100 W. Its weakness is the worst case. A kernel, drivers and a rich software stack make latency hard to bound, so the hardest loops stay in the drives and the safety functions in dedicated hardware (real-time operating system, embedded system).

Some vendors blur the line between IPC and controller: a soft PLC running on an IPC executes the same IEC 61131-3 program as a hardware PLC, with the same scan discipline (PLC).