Siemens SIMATIC – Higher, Farther, Faster: How to Boost Performance to a Whole New Level
January 27, 2025
Siemens SIMATIC – A True Performance Pack: The Latest CPUs Excel at Processing, Communication, and Memory Performance
By Christian Thoma & Mathias Albrecht, Senior Marketing Portfolio Responsible – SIMATIC Virtual PLC
The requirements for machine performance are on the rise. Luckily, automation cannot only keep up with these moving goalposts but also set a whole new pace: The latest performance boost for Siemens control systems gives machine builders and operators more than enough performance punch to enable intelligent, adaptive, and digital production operations. Gone are the days when command processing times had to be carefully considered when selecting a PLC — and this blog article explains what this means for machine performance.
Data-Hungry Applications and Their Implications
Automation is changing, and requirements such as intelligent maintenance, flexible production, and shorter engineering cycles are just some of the selection criteria for new machines and their corresponding automation systems. Why do these changes affect control performance requirements? Well, many of the concepts used for this are based on Industry 4.0, the merging of IT with OT including digitalization. They require up-to-date and comprehensive data from both, production and IT. As a result, the amount of data that automation systems have to handle grows every year — and data processing and communication increasingly take up computing resources that are then unavailable for the automation program.
A Jitter in the Automation
Is this a problem? Well, yes and no — typically, a large part of this data communication with and within the automation goes through the PLC and takes up part of the available computing resources. Depending on what type of system you use, this can lead to excessive jitter: As the automation program and data communication share computing resources, the execution of the control program may vary slightly from cycle to cycle by a few milliseconds. This effect is called jitter, and it leads to varying reaction times in the process: For example, adhesive beads could be dispensed in slightly varying amounts from droplet to droplet, so that the adhesive isn’t uniformly thick. This may be ok, or it may lead to process issues—so keeping the jitter as small as possible is important.
The Performance (R)evolution in Detail
So how do we achieve this performance evolution — or revolution? One way is by providing automation with enough spare performance resources. This is why we have been continually improving the performance of our SIMATIC controllers — and by a lot. Today’s bit processing performance is faster than what was state-of-the-art ten years ago by a factor of ten (and sometimes even more than that). Today, our “smallest” CPU boasts a bit performance of 6 ns, which, as some of our senior readers may fondly recall, is in the range of what we could achieve with our fastest CPU 15 years ago, the SIMATIC CPU 319, the fastest SIMATIC S7-300 CPU we had then.
Today’s star performer, SIMATIC CPU 1518, delivers bit operation in a breathtakingly short 0.3 ns — less than a blink of an eye, even for microprocessors. We have achieved this performance boost by incorporating faster processors, optimizing the firmware, and using multicore architectures, among other improvements. Multicore architectures in particular are a big asset in our digital times: They enable us to assign communication tasks and the execution of the user program to different cores, both increasing communication performance and making the execution of the user program faster. More on multicore architectures can be found in this excellent blog article.
There’s Nothing Basic About “Basic” Automation
This performance boost does not benefit just SIMATIC S7-1500 controllers: We also increased the performance level of the PLC portfolio for basic automation. SIMATIC S7-1200 G2 controllers are now more than twice as fast, while their price remains the same, plus they use a similar internal architecture so that solutions can be seamlessly scaled up to SIMATIC S7-1500. With Safety Integrated — which is already enabled as a signal board on the CPU — and efficient Motion Control features, the no-longer-so-simple basic automation applications can reach a whole new level of performance.
Performance Exactly Where and When it is Needed
The result is a comprehensive controller portfolio that offers more than enough computing power for every area of application. The significantly improved performance in the new SIMATIC S7-1200 G2 controller family leaves nothing to be desired in the field of basic automation, and it now even enables the implementation of complex motion controls, such as the coordination of multiple motion axes.
For the SIMATIC S7-1500 controllers, we can rightly say that computing power is no longer an issue at all. Choosing the right SIMATIC controller now comes down to criteria like quantity structure and required interfaces. This is why we recently reduced the number of CPU performance brackets to two: SIMATIC CPUs 1510SP to 1516 now differ only in terms of working memory for program execution and data processing, and integrated PROFINET und PROFIBUS interfaces.
Bracket number two also contains the high-end CPUs 1517 and 1518. An extra perk: As all SIMATIC controllers have a uniform architecture and can be engineered with the same tools, users can switch between different CPUs with little to no extra engineering work. The latest CPU generation is almost 100% program-compatible with its predecessors, so that the control program can simply be transferred via memory card or by copying the required program parts in TIA Portal.
How to Get the Latest Boost in Performance
Better performance for all applications from basic to advanced and from the shopfloor to the cloud: The latest performance boost is a win-win-situation for both machine builders and users. No extra engineering, fewer spare parts, and the simple migration of existing applications — does this sound too good to be true? Why not try it out? Here’s how you can get your performance boost in automation:
- Learn more about the benefits offered by SIMATIC S7-1200 G2 or SIMATIC S7-1500 and specify the latest controllers for all new machines.
- Configure and order the new hardware directly in the TIA Selection Tool.
- Enjoy the benefits of a performance boost in automation.
- Step into a new era of added opportunities where performance is no longer an issue.
