Managing Director Hans Beckhoff traditionally opens the press conference at SPS IPC Drives with a brief outline of the company's economic development: after an extremely successful 2015 financial year with a 22% increase in turnover to 620 million euros, the company from Verl will have to be satisfied with a single-digit increase this year: "We will achieve growth of around eight percent in 2016," which is still acceptable considering the state of the global economy.

Even if the current sales growth is not in double figures, the internal (key) figures of the new embedded PCs in the CX series are. Intel Xeon D processors with up to twelve CPU cores are integrated into the three models, which are set to go into series production in the first quarter of 2017. They are intended to close the gap between the previous embedded computers, which have four 2.1 GHz cores in the highest configuration level, and the high-performance computers of the C66xx series. Product Manager Andreas Thome: "The decisive factor is that the Twincat 3 automation software can be used to distribute the various tasks of the control sequence to the different CPU cores, which allows a finely granularly configured computing load." He also refers to the external graphics card equipped with a 2 GByte GPU RAM, so that the graphics processor does not have to share the RAM memory with the CPU. However, the high power density makes a fan necessary, which is plugged in wirelessly.

According to Hans Beckhoff, another trade fair highlight is the new device series for high-end measurement technology. The corresponding modules in a metal housing can be integrated directly into the modular Ethercat terminal system and can be combined with the portfolio of over 500 other Ethercat terminals. This makes high-precision, fast and robust measurement technology an integral part of PC-based control. For the product launch, the series comprises eleven modules with different interfaces and input circuits, including for voltage measurement (20 mV to 30 V), current measurement (±20 mA), IEPE, thermocouple, RTD (PT100/1000), strain gauge/load cell with full/half or quarter bridge with internal supplement or potentiometer. The measuring ranges of the input channels can be flexibly parameterized both electrically and on the software side.