OMRON MICROPROCESSOR

[suresh_ 6]

Is it true that Omron has discontinued ASICs based microprocessor in favour of Intel ATOM?  Generally speaking, I cannot find precise information about the microprocessors used in OMRON PLCs, If someone could provide some  details about this topic it would be greatly helpful.

[Sergei Troizky 26]

I am very curios of why at all one would need to know that.

[suresh_ 6]

hello Sergei thank you for your interest. The reason I am asking about PLC HW, given or taken, are the following: firstly, in the same manner we know something about our PCs HW, we should pheraphs know the same about our PLCs HW (having noticed that its that nuts and bolts are hided quite well indeed by the manufacturer), second, once one is trying to deploy a low end PLC in the Control Loop signal processing realm, there is some curiosity to see if HW is a constraint or not. Anyway  I hope this clarifies.

[Crossbow 295]

The NX and NJ series do in fact use an off the shelf processor instead of a custom Omron-developed ASIC as the C Series did.  It shortens the development time for new products, and allows Omron to focus on the software of the controller more than the redesign of the chip to make the next generation CPU. It also makes it easier to make changes and add features, as it doesn't require a CPU redesign, only a software update.

As for what brand or speed of CPUs are used, if it is not listed in the hardware manuals for the CPUs, then it is not publicly available.  

[suresh_ 6]

15 hours ago, Crossbow said:

The NX and NJ series do in fact use an off the shelf processor instead of a custom Omron-developed ASIC as the C Series did.  It shortens the development time for new products, and allows Omron to focus on the software of the controller more than the redesign of the chip to make the next generation CPU. It also makes it easier to make changes and add features, as it doesn't require a CPU redesign, only a software update.

As for what brand or speed of CPUs are used, if it is not listed in the hardware manuals for the CPUs, then it is not publicly available.  

Hello Crossbow, thank you for your reply.  I have found similar information on a Intel brochure and I am not sure if implementing Atom based architecture on PLCs turns out to be an improvement or not for the end user. In fact a PLC may run on the same microprocessor a PC run but they are different machines intended for very different use. Bottom line, I am not sure if PLC manufacturers are cutting angles to reduce time to market of new products and if this may affect product quality or not.

[Crossbow 295]

15 hours ago, suresh_ said:

Hello Crossbow, thank you for your reply.  I have found similar information on a Intel brochure and I am not sure if implementing Atom based architecture on PLCs turns out to be an improvement or not for the end user. In fact a PLC may run on the same microprocessor a PC run but they are different machines intended for very different use. Bottom line, I am not sure if PLC manufacturers are cutting angles to reduce time to market of new products and if this may affect product quality or not.

It is certainly NOT a shortcut!  If you look at processing time on the newer PLCs like NX and compare them to the older ones like CX, you can do in under a millisecond what used to take 30-50ms.  There are blatantly obvious benefits to using a standardized chipset.

[pturmel 159]

It's not a new idea, either.  GE Fanuc processors back to the 90-30 and 90-70 families have all been Intel processors.  You could even add 'C' blocks using an early Microsoft compiler (DOS).

[suresh_ 6]

Quote

The CPU of the PLC uses a 64bit RISC chip, multi-CPU parallel processing or time-sharing processing or task-sharing processing

Quoted from OMRON NJ Sysmac Machine Automation Controller Principles and Applications 

Personally I prefer reliability rather than state of the art tech, however I found quite impressing Execution time of LD (0.23 microsec) and MOV (1,76 microsec). Unfortunately PLC manufaturers are not so vocal about Floating Point Execution time (FLOPS) that is so crucial to manipulate analog signals. Now I don't want to compare PLC and PC but since Intel Atom is much slower if compared to Core iX e.g, I hope that introducing Atom to PLC will not lower the quality of PLC. Moreover, if manufaturers decide to cut costs on microprocessor quality, they could launch new HW configuration without providing customers any benchmark to compare with.

Edited 4 Mar 2022 by suresh_

[JYG 13]

NX1 seem to be using Atom Z530, 1 core, 512K Cache, 1.60 GHz, 533 MHz FSB : https://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/case-study/omrons-integrated-machine-controller-case-study.pdf

NX7 seem to use Intel quad Core i7 : https://www.ethercat.org/en/products/E07A519AC99D41359FB32FF4401AE03F.htm