Sinsegye: With independent innovation as the propeller, wave making PC controls domestic substitution
Control Engineering China Interview with Liu Shengfu, Senior Vice President of Sinsegye
In the field of industrial automation, the iteration speed of innovative achievements has always been astonishing. Taking the most basic motor starting as an example, from the earliest star angle starting and soft starting, to the widely used frequency converters and servo products today, the enthusiastic scene of "you sing and I appear" in the industrial control industry has become the norm.
Nowadays, with the quiet arrival of the Industry 4.0 era, people's demand for higher precision, stronger computing power, and reliability has brought broad development opportunities to PC based control technology. In the field of PC control in China, although Sinsegye has just started for two years, it has accumulated rich product lines and project experience. What is the secret to its fame? What efforts and contributions have they made to overcome the core challenges of PC control? To answer these questions, Control Engineering China exclusively interviewed Liu Shengfu, Senior Vice President of Sinegye.
Wave has arrived: PC controlled domestic substitution is underway
In fact, as early as the mid-1990s, PC based controllers began to undertake functions such as PLC, motion controllers, and HMI. As technology continues to iterate, industrial PCs have been able to play multiple roles as Internet of Things gateways, edge computing devices and data analysis platforms. People are increasingly accepting PC architecture. Domestic manufacturers are also eager to try, and Sinsegye is the leader in this wave of progress.
The ever-changing industrial automation market is constantly surging with fresh challenges and opportunities. Liu Shengfu shared that in the photovoltaic industry, in the past, the price of polycrystalline silicon was expensive, and producers rarely needed to pay attention to lean algorithms and optimization control. However, with the advancement of technology, intensified competition, and decreasing profits, the topics of efficient production, process optimization, and energy conservation and emission reduction have attracted much attention. This is also an inevitable trend for the advancement of the times and market development.
Indeed, in recent years, not only in emerging industries with explosive growth such as photovoltaics and semiconductors, but also with the introduction of a large number of visual applications, a significant increase in the number of on-site axes, and the continuous exploration of AI deep learning and advanced control requirements, traditional PLCs cannot meet people's requirements for high motion speed and high control accuracy by simply connecting more IO. How to use stronger algorithms and computing power to cope with the challenges brought by multi computing power and multi task integration is the primary issue that automation manufacturers and users expect to solve.
Having gone through the development history of comprehensive introduction and imitation, China's industrial revolution has now entered a new stage of catching up with others through "intelligent manufacturing". However, "struggling in the automation industry is a relatively slow process," Liu Shengfu said, requiring companies to invest a lot of time and industry expert resources. Unlike fields such as DCS where domestic substitution started earlier, there are still serious bottleneck problems in domestic PC control. Therefore, many manufacturers choose to start with drivers and gradually cover control systems, while Sinegye chose PLC, which is more difficult to conquer on the control end, as the starting point. Liu Shengfu said that this also makes Sinsegye's persistence and current achievements more meaningful.
Using PC based containers to unleash the vitality of "integrated computing and control"
Why choose PC architecture? From a hardware perspective, the PC architecture provides an open hardware bus for expansion cards, which can stimulate the creativity of developers; From a software perspective, the open performance of PC operating systems provides developers with opportunities to adapt to various application development scenarios. From this, it can be seen that PC control is not a trendy concept, but rather seen as a container that carries computing power.
Over the years, there have been numerous and diverse types of industrial infrastructure, mostly consisting of industrial computers with single control programs. For users, the cost of using such hardware and topology is high, and due to the closed system, the secondary development cycle is long and the programming cost is high. At the same time, adding intelligence and business processes to traditional architectures will create a huge contradiction with real-time performance, affecting the final product quality.
Regarding this, Liu Shengfu stated that algorithms are the soul and core that empower automation, and can effectively solve the problems of real-time automation, control accuracy, responsiveness, and reliability. As a product driven enterprise incubated by the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sinsegye advocates using the "integrated computing and control" concept of "PLC+industrial computer+motion controller+edge server" to help users achieve breakthroughs.
Devote ourselves to research and development, ushering in a new era of "iComuter"
In current hot topics such as digital factories and intelligent manufacturing, the term "intelligence" can be understood as replacing humans with software to avoid human weaknesses, defects, and high costs. Liu Shengfu stated that Sinegye has always been committed to driving PLCs with core algorithms, allowing customers to use a flexible and interface rich intelligent machine to meet different control needs in complex industrial environments. Among them, the intelligent machine is the abbreviation of "industrial intelligent computer".
It is worth mentioning that in terms of industrial intelligence products, although Sinsegye has only been established for two short years, it has already developed various types from rack mounted to embedded. Liu Shengfu said that this is thanks to the years of hard work invested by the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has also given Sinegye the foundation and confidence to industrialize technology. Nowadays, Sinsegye can launch a new product almost every quarter for customers with different computing power needs and application scenarios.
Moreover, there is no doubt that stability and reliability are the most important for users in the automation field. On one level, Liu Shengfu stated that although Sinegye's enterprise scale is not large, 80-90% of them are R&D personnel, with three powerful teams including embedded software, hardware, and automation application development. At the same time, all motherboard designs and production processes of Sinsegye's AI hardware have passed global authoritative certifications (including electromagnetic compatibility EMC, collision avoidance, UL, etc.)
Currently, Sinsegye's models including CH20X series, SX2 series, SX5 series, and SP series are mostly completed at Lenovo Group's Southern Intelligent Manufacturing Base. For Sinsegye, entrusting this important job to Lenovo, who has extensive experience in computer manufacturing, not only ensures product quality but also has a cost advantage. At the same time, Liu Shengfu stated that Sinegye is also building a dedicated product testing center in Suzhou, which will create a solid fortress for the company's more agile response and service in the future.
Overcoming the bottleneck, determined to become a great automation company
Looking at the domestic market, there are actually many manufacturers of traditional PLCs, but PC architecture is rarely involved, which indirectly verifies that this is indeed a difficult "hard bone" to crack. Liu Shengfu stated that the most difficult problem in developing PC based control is not hardware. To meet the performance indicators of safety, reliability, and real-time performance, the operating system and IDE compilation ecosystem are crucial. This requires a theoretical knowledge system to support it, requiring enterprises to invest a lot of research and development time, personnel, and costs, and is a gradual process
Sinsegye computable manufacturing solution control architecture diagram
From the development history of Sinsegye, its first industrial intelligence machine launched to the market adopted the x86 CPU of Haiguang and the GPU of Cambrian, both incubated by the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. These are also core components that are easily choked by foreign countries. Of course, as the company is still in its early stages, in order to accelerate the entry and market launch of its AI products, its compilation environment still uses Codesys' Runtime. With the help of a massive algorithm library and a powerful ecosystem, its overall solution has also gained the favor of automation engineers and users. Of course, looking towards the future, Sinsegye also hopes to gradually grow and move towards the ideal of 100% localization replacement for all products.
Undoubtedly, in today's fiercely competitive automation market, Sinsegye's dedicated research and development, down-to-earth attitude along the way, is already admirable. Looking to the future, Sinsegye will continue to closely follow the banner of "Made in China", stand together with more segmented industry users, uphold sincerity and craftsmanship, and let localization replace this ship that sails through the wind and waves, carrying more determination and dreams to sail further away.