Control room footprint is much smaller with PlantWeb and FF. Traditional DCS I/O cards consist of digital input, digital output, and analog input cards. Each card can typically accommodate 8 channels. DeltaV FOUNDATION fieldbus technology uses a fieldbus I/O card. Using a DeltaV fieldbus I/O card we refer to channels as blocks. One block equals one channel. A DeltaV fieldbus card accommodates 64 blocks (channels) compared to 8 channels for a traditional DCS I/O card. DeltaV with native support for wireless further reduces the amount of physical wires. Wireless eliminates the need/cost for building in spare I/O capacity.

See how DeltaV with FOUNDATION fieldbus significantly reduces the amount of space needed in the control room. Both figures (below) show I/O cards and power for a 350-field device installation.