Renesas Electronics Corporation now offers RZ/N2L mpus for Industrial Ethernet communications, making it simple to add networking capabilities to industrial equipment and devices. These devices follow many industry standard specifications and protocols to aid in the development of industrial automation equipment that requires real-time capabilities.
The new products support the increasingly popular TSN Ethernet standard that provides real-time communications. The new devices integrate a tsn-compliant three-port Gigabit Ethernet switch and an EtherCAT slave controller, supporting all major industrial network communication protocols including EtherCAT, PROFINET RT, Ethernet/IP and OPC UA, as well as the new PROFINET IRT. By utilizing a microprocessor as a companion chip to the host CPU, users can add Industrial Ethernet capabilities to their devices without changing their internal configuration. This enables customers to develop factory automation of industrial equipment using fast and precise synchronous control.
“I expect that RZ/N2L, which supports the fast-growing TSN standard, will further accelerate the spread of Ethernet in the factory automation market,” said Dietmar R. Franke, CEO/CFO of port industrial automation GmbH. “We plan for RZ/N2L N2L releases target middleware targeting multi-protocol real-time communication to help our customers implement Industrial Ethernet communication technology on their equipment."
"Modifying the entire design of a device to implement Industrial Ethernet functionality creates a huge development burden in terms of time and cost," said Hitoshi Shirakabe, vice president of the Industrial Automation Division at Renesas. To address this challenge, Renesas developed the RZ /N2L and optimize it as an add-on to an existing system. I believe it will enable customers to rapidly deploy cutting edge industrial networks with minimal system modifications. "
The microprocessor can also be used as a functional safety-enabled microprocessor. The company's functional safety solutions, such as self-diagnostic software for MPUs, upcoming functional safety platform software and safety networks, can reduce the time and effort associated with development. The device is built around an Arm Cortex-R52 and operates at a maximum frequency of 400MHz. It combines high-capacity ECC RAM with peripheral functions such as delta-sigma interface, A/D converters, and PWM timers, allowing the microprocessor to develop applications as a stand-alone device, including remote I/O, sensor hubs and inverter. The UART and CAN functions allow the device to act as a gateway to convert RS485 or CAN based fieldbuses to Industrial Ethernet.
The RZ/N2L has parallel and serial host interfaces for connecting to the host CPU for external applications. And it is optimized as a dedicated network companion chip, which enables direct connection between RZ/N2L and CPU to achieve high-speed access. In addition, the external CPU can directly access the communication data stored in the microprocessor's system RAM. Because it can perform network processing independently of an external CPU, Industrial Ethernet can be added to a system without major changes to existing application software.
