Two out of three for high integrity control system

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 1, 2004

The RTP2300T HICS high integrity control system ensures the highest integrity and the highest availability of user data.

For mission-critical processes and applications, there's no substitute for triple modular redundancy (TMR).

Following the IEC61508 standard for Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS), RTP has created a new TMR architecture designed specifically for process control applications.

The RTP2300T HICS high integrity control system ensures the highest integrity and the highest availability of user data.

It uses two-out-of-three (2oo3) voting routines to ensure the process is protected and-equally important-that expensive downtime is eliminated.

An RTP2300T has more flexibility than traditional TMR systems.

Where past TMR systems were limited because of the hardware used to synchronise CPUs and because their I/O was not distributable, RTP has taken advantage of today's high speed networking technology - including high-speed logic switching and a fast Ethernet-based I/O bus - to do away with the limiting hardware required for older systems.

As a result, the three controllers that comprise the RTP2300T can be housed separately to ensure survivability in a catastrophe, such as a fire.

Additional I/O chassis can be located remotely from the three controllers to eliminate the high cost and complexity of home-run wiring.

For added availability, a dual-powered chassis can be added for both processor and I/O.

Where requirements may dictate several redundant processors, the RTP2300T ensures process integrity and availability for less cost and less complexity.

Redundancy protects against hardware failure for high system availability, but does not provide for error checking.

The RTP HICS is suited for high-integrity, fault checking applications.

Its high-integrity communications are validated using advanced built-in CRC routines on both the host and the I/O bus.

For critical operations, such as program changes, special routines check and recheck the program validity.

Outputs from all three processors are sent to the I/O chassis where the voting occurs, as close to the process as possible.

RTP offers a complete family of high-integrity voting systems for process control, all following the standards of IEC61508.

For the highest level of integrity and availability, the RTP2300T Triple Modular Redundant system features 2oo3 voting with triple, dual or common I/O, as required.

The RTP2300D HICS is built on the same advanced technology as RTP2300T, for a dual-redundant 1oo2D solution.

The 1oo2D voting solution uses advanced diagnostics to assist in results adjudication.

According to IEC61508, 1oo2D systems can achieve the same SIL-rating as 2oo3 systems.

The RTP2300D features dual-redundant processors, triple, dual or common I/O as required, and up to 32 remote I/O chassis, all built upon the same components and configuration environment (RTP NetSuite) as the RTP2300T.

Both the RTP2300T and RTP2300D support a medium to large distributed control system architecture of up to 10,000 I/O points per node.

For smaller systems, the Micro20xxD HICS provides a 1oo2D voting solution using dual processors and I/O.

The Micro20xxD uses a subset of the same components as the RTP2300T, and RTP NetSuite.

The RTP high-integrity control system architecture is extremely scalable, flexible, and incorporates multiple levels of redundancy.

Its unique design is built on a set of standard hardware and software components that supports multiple factory-configured applications.

These standard components (processors, chassis, I/O and configuration environment are designed to be configured different systems ranging from triple-modular redundant (T) to dual-redundant (D), in a DCS or a PLC configuration.