Industry Expert Judges Name Altera’s Industry 4.0 PLC Reference Design as Ultimate Product Winner
Hong Kong, July 28, 2015 – Altera Corporation received the first-place ACE award for best reference design during the EE Times and EDN 2015 UBM Canon Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Awards ceremony at the Embedded Systems Conference held in Santa Clara, California, on July 21, 2015. Altera received top honors in the Ultimate Product: Reference Design category for its single-chip, cloud-enabled programmable logic controller (PLC) reference design for Industry 4.0 applications. The ACE Awards Ultimate Product category recognized leading-edge technologies brought to market during calendar year 2014.
Winner: The Altera Industry 4.0-ready, Single-chip, Secure Cloud-enabled PLC
Altera’s innovative, single-chip PLC reference design runs on the Altera ARM-based Cyclone V SoC. Developed in partnership with 3S Smart Software Solutions, EXOR International, and Barco Silex, the reference design implements motion control, EtherCAT, HMI and secure enterprise communication over OPC-UA in a microSOM (micro system-on-module). With the ready-made microSOM and evaluation design, designers are provided with a platform with the flexibility, low cost, reduced board space, and low power needed to quickly develop a complete Industry 4.0-ready PLC with integrated HMI on a single chip. For more information on this product, visit: https://www.altera.com/cloud-enabled-plc.
Altera also was a finalist in the Ultimate Product: Processors category with its Arria® 10 FPGAs and SoCs, which feature hard floating-point DSP (digital signal processing) implementations.
“We are continually amazed at the level of creativity in the design, innovation and technology exemplified by these award winners,” said Suzanne Deffree, executive editor at UBM Canon’s EDN. “The ACE Awards celebrate the highest achievements in innovation and creativity in electronics design, and selecting one organization or individual that stands out above the rest is incredibly challenging. We are pleased to be able to celebrate their achievements.”
The EE Times/EDN ACE Awards recognize the creators of technology who demonstrate leadership and innovation in the global industry. ACE Award finalists are nominated by a panel of editors from EE Times and EDN. Award winners are determined by an independent panel of industry expert judges, includingGordon Bell, senior researcher, Microsoft Research; Gene Frantz, Professor, Rice University; and Dennis Monticelli, former Chief Technologist and Fellow at National Semiconductor.
“We are honored to receive this recognition, said Niladri Roy, senior strategic marketing manager of the Industrial Business Unit at Altera. “With the Industrial Internet of Things becoming a reality, intelligence at the edge on the factory floor and edge-to enterprise intelligence are key to realizing the promise of Industry 4.0. PLCs that communicate securely over the cloud from factory to enterprise enable industrial manufacturers to harvest and use industrial process data to increase efficiency, enable mass-customization, and save hugely on plant downtime costs through predictive maintenance. The Altera PLC reference design, built on the Altera Cyclone V SoC,provides a blueprint for our customers to build factory automation systems that enable Industry 4.0 and IIoT applications.”
