Infrastructure for Digital Twins: Data, Communications, Computing, and Storage

The successful use and adoption of Digital Twins hinges on a general infrastructure comprised of at least four technology areas. The converged Networks for Data, Digital Storage, Computing, and Communications form the necessary fabric to host and operate Digital Twins. This combination promises to deliver both the functionality and intrinsic attributes that make good on the promises of Digital Transformation. They are what makes it possible to conquer and tame the complexity of the barriers to successful management of the lifecycles for manufacturing, products, services, and processes. There are two concepts that are important here: the first is the decoupling between the infrastructure itself and the applications (e.g., Digital Twins) that run over it; and the second is infrastructure resources that are software defined, distributed, composable, and networked, to fit a large range of applications. In this Chapter we motivate the characteristics of the end-to-end data, storage, computing, and communications fabric which will ideally host Digital Twin models as they are built, deployed, operated, and continually refined. We further address the converged infrastructure that connects the physical endpoints, involving both humans and machines, to the digital space existing in Clouds, Edges and High-Performance Computing Centers. Specifically, we focus on the role of the critical boundary between physical systems and cyber space, and between Operational Technologies (OT) and Information Technologies (IT), where a challenging cultural and technological transition needs to fully unfold. The last point is illustrated by examining the application of Digital Twins in two critical domains, modern manufacturing and automotive.