Triconex is both the name of a

Schneider Electric Schneider Electric SE is a French multinational company that specializes in digital automation and energy management. It addresses homes, buildings, data centers, infrastructure and industries, by combining energy technologies, real-time automation ...

brand that supplies products, systems, and services for safety, critical control, and turbomachinery applications and the name of its hardware devices that utilize its TriStation application software. Triconex products are based on patented

Triple modular redundancy Triple is used in several contexts to mean "threefold" or a " treble": Sports * Triple (baseball), a three-base hit * A basketball three-point field goal * A figure skating jump with three rotations * In bowling terms, three strikes in a row * I ...

(TMR) industrial safety-shutdown technology. Today, Triconex TMR products operate globally in more than 11,500 installations.

Company history

The history of Triconex was published in the book ''The History of a Safer World'' by Gary L. Wilkinson. The company was founded in September 1983 by Jon Wimer in

Santa Ana, California Santa Ana () is the second most populous city and the county seat of Orange County, California. Located in the Greater Los Angeles region of Southern California, the city's population was 310,227 at the 2020 census, making Santa Ana the List of ...

and began operations in March 1984. The business plan was written by Wimer and Peter Pitsker, an automation industry veteran and Stanford graduate. They presented the plan for a TMR (triple modular redundant) system named "Tricon" that would improve the safety and reliability of industrial applications. Among the customers they targeted were the petro-chemical giants, such as

Exxon ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...

Shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard ou ...

Chevron Chevron (often relating to V-shaped patterns) may refer to: Science and technology * Chevron (aerospace), sawtooth patterns on some jet engines * Chevron (anatomy), a bone * ''Eulithis testata'', a moth * Chevron (geology), a fold in rock lay ...

, and BP. Pitsker and Wimer presented the business plan to Los Angeles-based investor Chuck Cole, who was also a professor at USC. Cole was interested, so he contacted his personal attorney, future two-time Los Angeles Mayor

Richard Riordan Richard Joseph Riordan (born May 1, 1930) is an American investment banker, businessman, lawyer, and former Republican politician who was the 39th Mayor of Los Angeles, from 1993 to 2001. Born in New York City and raised in New Rochelle, New Y ...

. Riordan agreed to invest $50,000 and Cole's venture capital team matched it, providing the seed money for Triconex. Wimer hired computer architect Ken Brody out of another computer manufacturer as Vice President of Research and Development and the number 2 employee. Ken Brody hired Wing N. Toy from

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

. After two years, however, the company nearly failed due to the expense and complications of testing a new safety system. In February 1986, founder Wimer left the company and the board asked a seasoned executive, William K. Barkovitz to become CEO; Barkovitz ended up leading the company for 9 years. At the end of his term, Triconex became the leading safety system in a market it largely created, made acquisitions, and completed an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

. In January 1994, Triconex was acquired by British-based SIEBE for 90 million dollars. The hardware architect of the company was Gary Hufton, and the software development manager was Glen Alleman. Along with Wing N. Toy (the lead engineer of the fault-tolerant ESS telephone switch), they led a small successful engineering team that built the first Tricon system, sold in June 1986. Soon after, Exxon became a customer and

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...

agreed to distribute the Tricon. Among the software engineers who worked for Triconex were Phil Huber and

Dennis Morin Dennis R. Morin (February 25, 1946 – December 31, 2012) was an American technology entrepreneur and programmer, based in Irvine, California. He co-founded the software firm Wonderware. Early life Morin was born in Saco, Maine, a New Englan ...

, who later left the company to found

Wonderware Wonderware was a brand of industrial software now owned by Aveva and rebranded under the AVEVA name. Wonderware was part of Invensys plc, and Invensys plc was acquired in January 2014 by Schneider Electric. Invensys plc.SIL 3) and is usually used as a safety rather than a control system.

Operating theory

Fault tolerance in the Tricon is achieved by means of a Triple-Modular Redundant (TMR) architecture. The Tricon provides error-free, uninterrupted control in the presence of either hard failures of components, or transient faults from internal or external sources. The Tricon is designed with a fully triplicated architecture throughout, from the input modules through the Main Processors to the output modules. Every I/O module houses the circuitry for three independent legs. Each leg on the input modules reads the process data and passes that information to its respective Main Processor. The three Main Processors communicate with each other using a proprietary high-speed bus system called the TriBus. Once per scan, the three Main Processors synchronize and communicate with their two neighbors over the TriBus. The Tricon votes digital input data, compares output data, and sends copies of analog input data to each Main Processor. The Main Processors execute the userwritten application and send outputs generated by the application to the output modules. In addition to voting the input data, the TriBus votes the output data. This is done on the output modules as close to the field as possible to detect and compensate for any errors between the Tricon voting and the final output driven to the field.

Hardware

The Triconex system usually consists of the following typical modules: * Main Processor modules (triple). * Communication module(s) . * Input and output modules: can be analog and/or digital and work singularly or in hot-spare (standby). * Power supply modules (redundant). * Backplane(s) (chassis) that can hold the previous modules. * System cabinet(s): can compact one or more chassis in one cabinet. * Marshalling cabinets to adapt and standardize interface connections between the field instruments and the Triconex system cabinets. * Human machine interface (HMI) to monitor the events. * Engineering workstation (EWS) for programming. monitoring, troubleshooting, and updating.

Software

The Triconex main processors can communicate with the so-called TriStation 1131 application software to download, update and/or monitor programs. These programs are either written in: *

Function Block Diagram The Function Block Diagram (FBD) is a graphical language for programmable logic controller design, that can describe the function between input variables and output variables. A function is described as a set of elementary blocks. Input and out ...

language, * Ladder diagram language, or *

Structured text Structured text, abbreviated as ST or STX, is one of the five languages supported by the IEC 61131-3 standard, designed for programmable logic controllers (PLCs). It is a high level language that is block structured and syntactically resembles ...

(

Pascal Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to: People and fictional characters * Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name * Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** Blaise Pascal, Fren ...

like) Language. * Cause and Effect Matrix Programmable Language (CEMPLE). (Function Block Diagram, Ladder diagram and Structured Text are defined in IEC1131-3) Besides, a Sequence of Events (SOE) recorder software and Diagnostic monitor software are implemented.

Triton malware

In December 2017, it was reported that the safety systems of an unidentified power station, believed to be in

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...

were compromised when the Triconex industrial safety technology made by Schneider Electric SE was targeted in what is believed to have been a state sponsored attack. The computer security company Symantec claimed that the

malware Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depri ...

, known as "Triton", exploited a vulnerability in computers running the

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

operating system.

References and notes

External links

Triconex Safety Systems, Schneider Electric
{{Invensys Control engineering