Intelligent process control communication system and method

摘要

An intelligent front-end communication system which is interposed between a plurality of actively redundant process control computers and a computer network. The intelligent front end communication system includes at least one front end computer which is coupled to the computer network, and a serial communication interface which is coupled between the actively redundant process control computers and the front end computer. The serial communication interface transmits sequential sets of dynamic data from the actively redundant process control computers to the front end computer. The front end computer includes a plurality of reflective or shadow memory buffers for storing and time aligning corresponding sets of dynamic data which are asynchronously received from the serial communication interface.