The SPS/IPC/DRIVES exhibition is held annually in Nuremberg, Germany, and is the leading trade fair for automation. At last year’s event, B&R was awarded a prize from Intel honoring two decades of technological partnership between the two companies. For 20 years now, B&R has been using exclusively Intel processors in all of its industrial PCs.
B&R Managing Director Hans Wimmer receives the Intel award at the SPS/IPC/DRIVES exhibition in Nuremberg from Markus Gabler, Central Europe Sales Manager of Intel ESG Embedded Sales Group.
The cooperation with Intel began in 1989, when B&R decided to add industrial PCs to its product portfolio. The first products to hit the market from this new development were the Provit 3030 and Provit 4000, which utilized slot CPUs and motherboards from Intel.
The next major step was taken just a few years later in 1993, when the strategic decision was made to develop a particularly compact industrial PC in-house. The Provit 2000 was born, with an Intel 386 processor at its core. The next generation, Provit 5000, featured an innovative display transfer technology which made it possible to operate panels separately from the PC at a distance of several meters – a revolution in the area of industrial PCs at the time. The introduction of the Automation PC 620 in 2003 demonstrated B&R’s expertise in developing sophisticated PC technology.
The brand new Intel Pentium M processor offered the outstanding advantage of low power consumption. This allowed B&R to develop a completely new PC design in which this high-performance processor can be operated without a fan. This trend continued with the subsequent introduction of the Core2 Duo processors in the APC810. When the ground-breaking ATOM platform was introduced, it too was implemented in the existing PC platforms. Successive production generations, such as the Power Panel 500 with an Intel Atom processor, which was revealed at the 2009 SPS/IPC/DRIVES trade fair, continue to pursue this winning strategy.
The partnership between B&R and Intel is based on strong personal relationships and the shared planning that takes place, which reaches far into the future and enables early strategic product development. “The long-term availability of Intel processors and chipsets allows us to supply our customers with consistent product versions over the long term. Intel has proven to be a highly reliable partner for over 20 years. We look forward to continued success in this strategic partnership for many years to come,” shares B&R Managing Director, Hans Wimmer.
B&R Automation
www.br-automation.com
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Filed Under: Factory automation, Industrial computers, Motion control • motor controls, PCs