Cooperation between TenAsys and TSEP

Wolnzach, March 2020

Since 01.01.2020 TenAsys and TSEP have been working together in a cooperation with the goals of porting the IEEE 1588 PTP stack from TSEP to the real-time operating system INtime from TenAsys and working together to create a complete TSN solution.

The combination of a real-time operating system such as TenAsys’ INtime and TSEP’s own IEEE 1588 PTP stack is indispensable whenever several applications need to interact across distributed devices in order to perform time-critical tasks. Thanks to the precise common understanding of time, tasks planned in advance can be processed synchronously on all devices or data can be provided with a time stamp. Due to the high accuracy of the IEEE 1588 PTP stack of 20 nanoseconds, the deterministic behavior of the real-time operating system is essential, as this is the only way to ensure that the outstanding task is processed exactly at the scheduled time. Thereby the occurring waiting times between two tasks, which are absolutely necessary to minimize interferences, can be optimized. Ultimately, this combination leads to an increased cycle rate of tasks, increased productivity and low fatigue of equipment and machine.

IEEE 1588 is also the basis for the new standard IEEE 802.1AS TSN, or time-sensitive networking, which defines time-critical transmissions over a deterministic Ethernet network. Only if all TSN participants have a congruent time understanding, scheduling, traffic sharing and the selection and reservation of communication path can be carried out optimally. The IEEE 1588 PTP standard is the ideal protocol for the most accurate time synchronization via Ethernet in a distributed system. The goal of the cooperation is to further develop TSEP’s own IEEE 1588 PTP stack into a complete TSN solution and integrate it into TenAsys’ INtime real-time operating system.