Workstation InterFace Card

The Workstation InterFace card (WIF) is a MPC860T based processor card whose primary function is to handle communication requests between the RTDS Simulator and the host workstation. Each WIF contains an Ethernet transceiver and is assigned its own Ethernet address, thus allowing the connection of the RTDS Simulator racks to any standard Ethernet based local area network (LAN).

All of the low level communication requests between the Simulator and the host workstation are handled by the high level software running on the host workstation and the multi-tasking operating system being run by the WIF's MPC860T processor.

The WIF provides communications to load, start, and stop simulation cases. It provides the timestep clock and enables user interaction with the simulation. As well, it provides data exchange coordination and data record capabilities.