ARC’s definition of industrial network edge devices includes network edge infrastructure products (gateways, routers, switches, WAPs) as well as higher-level end devices (controllers, panels, drives), whose functionality includes the ability to connect to and/or execute applications resident in the cloud.
Fog computing is an architecture that uses collaborative end user clients or near-user edge devices for communication, data storage, control, configuration, measurement, and management.
A key question: Will intelligence, computing power, and affordable memory space offered by edge devices make the traditional PLC or DCS obsolete? If so, will decentralized architectures (distributed intelligence) supersede traditional centralized PLC- or DCS-based architectures? This workshop will help participants understand how edge technologies will affect future automation architectures.