Performance evaluation of an MMS/ATM implementation

Combined use of hardware and software in end systems is an important aspect in providing high performance communication subsystems to be used in real time distributed systems. We present a system for industrial automation and process control called MMS-ATM. Our architecture is based on the ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) protocol implemented in hardware and the MMS (Manufacturing Message Specification) application layer protocol implemented in software. We discuss the implementation structure of MMS-ATM and evaluate the performance of this hybrid hardware/software implementation.