To run the timing critical real-time protection and control with SSC600 SW, it is essential that the used PC hardware has enough resources which can be dedicated for each SSC600 SW virtual machine. SSC600 SW can ensure that it is isolated from other workloads, but the application needs the dedicated resources. Below are the minimum requirements to run SSC600 SW.
In addition to performance related requirements, it’s important to ensure that the selected PC hardware is applicable for its environment. For example when installing in substation, external interference should be considered. Especially immunity for EMC is important for robust operation of protection and control. International standards like IEC 61850-3 and IEEE 1613 and related certification helps to select suitable hardware.
| CPU |
At least 4 physical cores for SSC600 SW Speed > 2.1 GHz (nominal frequency) Intel Cache Allocation Technology -support |
| L3 Cache | At least 8 MiB (reserved for SSC600 SW) |
| Network |
IEEE 1588 HW timestamping 1 GbE for SV/GOOSE, PTP (Reserved for Process bus) 2 physical Ethernet ports |
| Memory | At least 8 GB RAM (dual-channel) (for SSC600 SW) |
| Harddisk space | 64 GB (for SSC600 SW) |
| BIOS | Has to have some configurability (for example disabling hyperthreading) |
As a reference, SSC600 SW has been tested successfully in a demanding system with the following hardware:
- Advantech ECU-579
- Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6208U CPU @ 2.90GHz
- AQD- D4U16R24-HE 16 G 2400 DDR4 ECC
- Dell PowerEdge XR12 Server
- Intel Xeon Silver 4314 2.4G, 16C/32T, 10.4GT/s, 24M Cache, Turbo, HT (135W) DDR4-2666
- 3200MT/s RDIMMs
- 8 x 8GB RDIMM, 3200MT/s, Single Rank
- 960GB SSD SATA Mix Use 6Gbps 512 2.5in Hot-plug AG Drive
- Dual, Hot-plug, Redundant Power Supply (1+1), 1400W
- Intel X710-T2L Dual Port 10GbE BASE-T Adapter, PCIe Full Height
- Dell PowerEdge XR5610 (Successfully tested in KVM environment)
- Intel Xeon Gold 5412U 2.1G, 24C/48T, 16GT/s, 45M Cache, Turbo, HT (185W) DDR5-4400
- 8 x DDR5 RDIMM, 4400 MT/s
- The following setting changes are required:
- Workload Profile: Low Latency Optimized Profile
- Virtualization Technology: Enabled
SSC600 SW is distributed as a complete Virtual Machine. These Virtual Machine packages are downloadable from ABB webpages. There is a separate SW package for each supported virtualization platform. The distributable file is an archived cabinet file (.cab), which needs to be extracted with any available unzipping software. For integrity purposes it is important to verify the digital signature of the .cab files and the SHA256 checksums of the included files before usage.