New Industrial Microprocessor (MPUs) supporting EtherCAT Communication Protocol

     Renesas Electronics, a global supplier of semiconductor solutions, announced the launch of a new industrial microprocessor (RZ/T2L) that supports the EtherCAT communication protocol to enable high-speed, accurate real-time control of industrial systems. RZ/T2L MPU inherits the hardware architecture of its high-end RZ/T2M product, bringing the ideal solution to the rapidly growing EtherCAT communications market. The new MPUs provide the high speed and precise real-time processing performance required for AC servo drivers, frequency converters, industrial robots, collaborative robots, and more. At the same time, the chip size is reduced by 50% compared with RZ/T2M. The new device is ideal for a wide range of applications such as factory automation (FA) as well as medical devices and building automation (BA). EtherCAT is increasingly being adopted in these scenarios.

     "Accurate real-time control is critical to improving productivity and product quality in industrial systems, and our RZ/T2L makes it a reality," said Ren Bai, Vice President of Renesas Electronics Industrial Automation Business. "Supporting the rapidly expanding EtherCAT market, the product will take performance to a whole new level and accelerate automation of factories and buildings, as well as medical devices."

     Norbert Weiss, General Manager of Lauterbach GmbH, a leading supplier of debugging and tracking tools, said: "For decades, we have been continuously committed to providing engineers with best-in-class development tools for Renesas's latest MCUS and MPUs to enable their future-oriented embedded innovations. Thanks to our partnership with Renesas Electronics, industrial users of the RZ/T2L MPU will also receive highly reliable tools and excellent support from the start."

     The RZ/T2L features an Arm® Cortex®-R52 CPU with a maximum operating frequency of 800 MHz, and a proven EtherCAT slave controller designed by Beckhoff Automation for Ethernet communications. All of RZ/T2L's internal RAM is equipped with ECC (Data Error Checking and Correction) capabilities required for industrial applications. In addition, the large amount of memory (576 KB) directly connected to the CPU reduces the unpredictability of execution time caused by caching and enables reliable, deterministic processing. RZ/T2L also provides A multi-protocol encoder interface for Angle sensors, a Sigma-Delta interface, and A/D converter, among other peripheral functions. These are arranged on a dedicated low-latency peripheral port (LLPP) bus directly connected to the CPU for fast, accurate real-time control capabilities.

     The RZ/T2L uses the same architecture as Renesas's top-end motor control MPU product, the RZ/T2M, including CPU, peripheral functions and internal bus to achieve the same level of performance. In addition, Renesas offers flexible configuration packages (FSPS) and software development environments compatible with other RZ family MPUs and RA family MCUS, enabling engineers to retain their existing software assets, thereby reducing development effort and costs and facilitating scalable development across a wide range of products.

     RZ/T2L can be used as a functional safety MPU to meet the growing processing requirements for functional safety of industrial equipment. Renesas will release its self-diagnostic software and SIL3 system package in Q4 2023 to enable users to reduce the effort and cost of developing functional safety systems. In addition, RZ/T2L supports various security features such as secure startup, secure firmware updates, JTAG authentication, unique ids and crypto accelerators to reduce the risk of data breaches and tampering with user programs. Renesas will launch the security package as part of its security solution in May 2023.

     Renesas demonstrated the capabilities and characteristics of RZ/T2L by combining its power management IC, optocoupler, Sigma-Delta modulator and EEPROM to create an optimized AC servo solution that integrates high-precision motor control and EtherCAT. The solution comes with reference circuits, Gerber files and sample program code to accelerate product development for applications such as AC servos, industrial gateways and remote I/O. Renesas's Portfolio of Successful Products is based on an engineering proven system architecture that incorporates compatible, seamless components to create optimized, low-risk designs that reduce time-to-market. Renesas now has more than 300 "winning portfolios" based on various products in its extensive product lineup.