Mr. van der Wal, what are the most important findings of your benchmarking work?

Eelco van der Wal: We are not interested in generating a processor comparison as such. Rather, we want to create a benchmark tool. We are developing different test scripts - and not just for the real-time issue, but also for everything else around it: memory access, caching, PCI Express access, communication via OPC UA and power consumption.
Probably the most interesting finding from all this work is that when creating the benchmark, it became clear that both the CPU suppliers and the controller manufacturers benefit from finally speaking the same language and thus gaining a much better understanding of each other.

Who can ultimately benefit from the benchmark?

van der Wal: The CPU suppliers benefit because they can now adapt their CPU implementations to the requirements of the controller suppliers. And the controller manufacturers benefit from the CPUs, which are better tailored to their needs thanks to the benchmark.

Will there be follow-up projects?

van der Wal: We are in the first phase of the project: building mutual understanding and specifying initial test requirements, including the first test scripts. In follow-up projects, we want to extend these tests, also to support the runtime environments for software from 3rd. Party providers.

For whom is the benchmark tool available?

van der Wal: The tool is currently only available to members of the working group. However, we would like to make it available to all PLCopen members. We have not yet decided how openly we will ultimately release the tool and whether the test scripts will be available to the general public in Github, for example. What we definitely want to avoid is the tool being seen as a generic benchmark for positioning controllers from different manufacturers against each other.