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US 4,897,777 AGranted
Peer-to-peer register exchange controller for PLCS
AssigneeSquare D Company
InventorsDonald R. Janke, Kim J. Watt, Dirk I. Gates
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A communication network for programmable logic controllers (PLCs) wherein selected memory means of each PLC have at least two ports directly accessible by other PLCs and certain registers of the PLCs are identical to enable efficient, high-speed transfer of blocks of data between the PLCs.
Claims13
A peer-to-peer communications network for high speed transfer of data between devices comprising in combination:
- a communications network;
- at least two programmable logic controllers (PLC's) connected to communicate with said network, each of said PLC's including a control processor for sequentially performing a series of instructions, a multi-port image memory coupled between said control processor and said communications network and having a plurality of blocks, a first one of said plurality of blocks corresponding to its respective one of said PLC's, the other of said plurality of blocks corresponding to respective ones of the others of said PLS's, an input/output device, means for storing status data representing a status of said input/output device in said first one of said blocks;
- and
- means for transferring said input/output status from each of said first ones of said blocks of said respective multi-port image memories to said respective blocks of said other of said multi-port image memories of said other PLC's independent of operation of said control processors.
1 more element
A peer-to-peer communications network for high speed transfer of data comprising:
- a communications network;
- a first programmable logic controller (PLC) communicatively coupled to said network, said first PLC including a first control processor for sequentially performing a series of instructions, a first input/output device, a first multi-port image memory coupled between said first control processor and said communications network and having a plurality of first memory blocks, a first one of said first memory blocks corresponding to said first PLC, and means for storing status data representing a status of said first input/output device in said first one of said first memory blocks;
- a second programmable logic controller (PLC) communicatively coupled to said network, said second PLC including a second control processor for sequentially performing a series of instructions, a second input/output device, a second multi-port image memory coupled between said second control processor and said communications network and having a plurality of second memory blocks, a second one of said second memory blocks corresponding to said second PLC, means for storing status data representing a status of said second input/output device in said first one of said second memory blocks;
- and
- means for transferring said data in said first one of said first memory blocks into said first one of said second memory blocks and for transferring said data in said second one of said second memory blocks into said second one of said first memory blocks independent of operation of said control processors.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.