Software defined process control system and methods for industrial process plants

A method of utilizing a process control system to control an industrial process within an industrial process plant, the method comprising:

• communicatively coupling, by a software defined networking layer of the process control system via one or more input/output (I/O) hardware interfaces, a first particular instantiated software component (ISC) of a plurality of ISCs with one or more process control field devices that are disposed in a field environment of the industrial process plant and that operate, responsive to control outputs generated by the first particular ISC, to control the industrial process,
• the plurality of ISCs included in an application layer of the process control system, nested to represent a hierarchical structure of the industrial process plant, and executing on one or more nodes of a plurality of nodes, each node including one or more respective processors, one or more respective memories, and one or more respective interfaces communicatively coupling the each node to at least one other node of the plurality of nodes,
• the first particular ISC executing, at the application layer, an instance of a controller service operable to receive data generated by the one or more process control field devices and generate a control output based on the received data,
• the first particular ISC nested in a second particular ISC executing, at the application layer, an instance of a process control subsystem service, the second particular ISC included in the plurality of ISCs of the application layer, and
• the one or more I/O hardware interfaces supporting one or more links communicatively connecting the process control system with the one or more process control field devices, and
• delivering, by the software defined networking layer via the communicative coupling, the data generated by the one or more process control field devices to the first particular ISC, the data generated by the one or more process control field devices received by the software defined network layer via the one or more I/O hardware interfaces;
• delivering, by the software defined networking layer via the one or more I/O hardware interfaces, the control output generated by the first particular ISC based on the received data to the one or more process control field devices, the control output received by the software defined networking layer via the communicative coupling;
• and
• initiating and performing, by the software defined networking layer, and responsive to one or more changes to the plurality of ISCs, a modification of a utilization of at least one of processor resources or memory resources of the plurality of nodes for the execution of the first particular ISC.