Siemens PCS7 (was: Statement & apology (was Re: 10 Year Rule))

[Hans Franke]

Am 1 Sep 2006 12:03 meinte Simon Fryer:
> On 9/1/06, Hans Franke <Hans.Franke at siemens.com> wrote:

> [Arm processors being embedded]

> > Well, yes, you got me nailed down there. I was only thinking
> > in the area of low volume embedded system - classic machinery
> > control, idustrial applications. That's here the part I know
> > most, and where I found that x86 is strong.

> Please don't confirm my fears by saying the Siemens S7 series of PLCs
> is x86 based.

Well, for one the PCS7 (or are you talking about the FSC
TFT-Display S7, or the Siemens S7 mobile phone?) is definitly
upper edge, for large scale control. And I don'T know all
components or internals here. At least the OS (operating
Station) part is Win2k based, and all development tools
are Windows based - thus it's safe to assume that his PC
anf 19" boxes hav at least one Pentium inside. For the AS
and ET processors I realy don't know. The software is
bundeled as a 'PCS-Library', and I'm prety shure that at
least some of the perhipherals use 166/167 CPUs.

BTW, a real neat chip. 8 register sets with 4 'virtual'
cores - task switch in a single clock cycles between
these - it's realy easy to programm communication and
controll applications with a great degree of paralell
processing.

To my memory, the PCS 7 is the follow up to the TELEPERM,
for quite large installations (aka chemical industry, car
manufacurer, etc. THe TELEPERM has been around since the
late 70s, based on custom CPUs. The migration did go smooth
since the dezentralized approach and most protokolls where
kept, or have been ported back. My guess is that there migh
be Pentiums, but rather running portet (or new) Versions of
the old custom minis.

Anyway, I can not realy relive you here.

But then again, for real world applications (beside the
geekisch ivory tower of the beauty of CPUs), all that
counts is if the System does a reliable performance of
what I want it to do. If they can tame a Pentium (and
Windows) to do the trick, fine with me - for the job!

Gruss
H.
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