Method and clock management for synchronized execution of a plurality of real-time applications

Abstract

The invention relates to a method and clock management for synchronized execution of a plurality of real-time applications (RTA1, RTA2, S2 SN, S2 PNT) in an industrial automation system, the real-time applications (RTA1, RTA2, S2 SN, S2 PNT) running in a common execution environment (AU), in particular on a common hardware platform. In this case, central clock management (S1 RSC) is carried out in the execution environment (AU), the central clock management (S1 RSC) in each case generating a derived trigger signal (TR) for controlling the operation of the respective real-time applications (RTA1, RTA2, S2 SN, S2 PNT) from a central clock (TRS) and providing the applications with said signal, wherein a plurality of sources are available for the central clock (TRS) and at least one of the sources is selected for the central clock (TRS), and wherein a configuration (CFG) is processed by the clock management (S1 RSC), the configuration specifying one of the sources for the central clock (TRS) and comprising rules for deriving the respective trigger signals (TR) for the real-time applications (RTA1, RTA2, S2 SN, S2 PNT) from the central clock (TRS). This allows clock pulses to be considered across applications and allows the clock source to be exchanged without adapting the applications / real-time applications, such that the applications can be flexibly used in different runtime scenarios via the configuration of the system, and mixed operation of runtime scenarios based on different clock sources is possible.

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