High performance control server system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10620613-B2
Application number	US-201715682090-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 21, 2017
Priority date	Aug 21, 2017
Publication date	Apr 14, 2020
Grant date	Apr 14, 2020

Abstract

Techniques for controlling the operation of a process plant or several process plants within a process control system using a centralized or distributed controller farm allow for increased flexibility in the process control system. Any of the controllers in the controller farm may be utilized to execute modules corresponding to any of the field devices in one or several process plants. Control modules or other operations may be allocated amongst the controllers distributing the load so that one controller is not performing several operations while others are inactive. Additionally, the controller farm may be located in a temperature controlled room or area in an offsite location from the process plants. In some scenarios, load balancing techniques are performed to distribute the load for the modules equally or at least similarly amongst the controllers.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A process control system comprising:
a plurality of field devices each configured to perform a physical function to control at least a portion of a process in the process control system; and
a plurality of controllers in a controller farm communicatively coupled to each of the plurality of field devices and each of the plurality of controllers configured to execute control modules corresponding to the plurality of field devices to control at least a portion of the process by transmitting control signals to the plurality of field devices corresponding to the physical functions, wherein each of the plurality of controllers includes one or more of the control modules, wherein each of the plurality of controllers is selected to execute one or more of the control modules for a particular time interval of a plurality of time intervals, and wherein each of the plurality of controllers is selected to control more than one of the control modules at different time intervals of the plurality of time intervals;
wherein an indication of load, bandwidth, or available memory is obtained from each of the plurality of controllers and the one or more control modules are assigned to the plurality of controllers at periodic time intervals according to at least one of the load, bandwidth, or available memory for each controller.

2. The process control system of claim 1 , wherein the controller farm is located in a temperature controlled area.

3. The process control system of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of field devices is a first plurality of field devices and further comprising a second plurality of field devices, and
wherein a first controller is selected to execute a first control module corresponding to the first plurality of field devices and a second controller is selected to execute a second control module corresponding to the second plurality of field devices at the particular time interval.

4. The process control system of claim 3 , wherein the first plurality of field devices and the second plurality of field devices are located within a same process plant.

5. The process control system of claim 3 , wherein the first plurality of field devices and the second plurality of field devices are located within different process plants.

6. The process control system of claim 3 , wherein at another time interval the first controller does not execute the first control module and the second controller executes the first control module and the second control module.

7. The process control system of claim 3 , wherein the second controller executes a redundancy module corresponding to the first control module.

8. The process control system of claim 1 , wherein each of the plurality of controllers in the controller farm communicate with each the plurality of field devices via an input/output (I/O) device communicatively coupled to the respective field device.

9. The process control system of claim 1 , wherein the selected controller is further configured to obtain and store data corresponding to the process including at least one of: configuration data, continuous data, and event data corresponding to the process.

10. The process control system of claim 1 , further comprising:
a computing device communicatively coupled to the plurality of controllers configured to assign the one or more control modules for each of the plurality of controllers to execute at the periodic time intervals.

11. The process control system of claim 10 , wherein the computing device is one of the plurality of controllers within the controller farm.

12. The process control system of claim 10 , wherein the computing device obtains a plurality of control modules to be executed by the plurality of controllers and ranks the plurality of control modules according to assigned priority levels.

13. The process control system of claim 12 , wherein the computing devices assigns control modules to the plurality of controllers in order of the respective rankings of each of the plurality of control modules, wherein the highest ranked control module is assigned first.

14. A method for controlling a plurality of field devices in one or more process plants within a process control system via a controller farm, the method comprising:
transmitting, by a plurality of controllers in a controller farm, control signals to a plurality of field devices each configured to perform a physical function to control at least a portion of a process in the process control system, wherein each of the plurality of controllers is configured to execute control modules corresponding to the plurality of field devices to control at least a portion of the process, wherein each of the plurality of controllers includes one or more of the control modules;
selecting one of the plurality of controllers to execute one or more of the control modules for a particular time interval of a plurality of time intervals, wherein each of the plurality of controllers is selected to control more than one of the control modules at different time intervals of the plurality of time intervals, and wherein an indication of load, bandwidth, or available memory is obtained from each of the plurality of controllers and the one or more control modules are assigned to the plurality of controllers at periodic time intervals according to at least one of the load, bandwidth, or available memory for each controller; and
transmitting, by the selected controller, control signals to the plurality of field devices in accordance with the one or more control modules during the particular time interval.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein the controller farm is located in a temperature controlled area.

16. The method of claim 14 , wherein the plurality of field devices is a first plurality of field devices, further comprising:
selecting a first controller to execute a first control module corresponding to the first plurality of field devices at the particular time interval;
transmitting, by the first controller, control signals to the first plurality of field devices in accordance with the first control module during the particular time interval;
selecting a second controller to execute a second control module corresponding to a second plurality of field devices at the particular time interval; and
transmitting, by the second controller, control signals to the second plurality of field devices in accordance with the second control module during the particular time interval.

17. The method of claim 16 , wherein the first plurality of field devices and the second plurality of field devices are located within a same process plant.

18. The method of claim 16 , wherein the first plurality of field devices and the second plurality of field devices are located within different process plants.

19. The method of claim 16 , wherein at another time interval the first controller does not execute the first control module and further comprising:
transmitting, by the second controller, control signals to the first plurality of field devices in accordance with the first control module during the other time interval.

20. The method of claim 16 , further comprising:
executing, by the second controller, a redundancy module corresponding to the first control module.

21. The method of claim 14 , further comprising:
obtaining and storing, by the selected controller, data corresponding to the process including at least one of: configuration data, continuous data, and event data corresponding to the process.

Assignees

• Fisher Rosemount Systems Inc

Inventors

• Ong Tiong P
• Burr Kent A
• Denison David R
• Sherriff Godfrey R
• Law Gary
• Hieb Brandon
• Smith David M

Classifications

• G05B19/418 Primary

  Total factory control, i.e. centrally controlling a plurality of machines, e.g. direct or distributed numerical control [DNC], flexible manufacturing systems [FMS], integrated manufacturing systems [IMS] or computer integrated manufacturing [CIM] · CPC title

• G05B19/4185 Primary

  characterised by the network communication · CPC title

• G06F13/4068

  Electrical coupling · CPC title

• G05B2219/31457

  Factory remote control, monitoring through internet · CPC title

• G05B2219/33334

  Load balancing, distribution between processors · CPC title