Renesas EC-1 EtherCAT communication system on chip

Renesas Electronics Singapore has launched the EC-1, a dedicated EtherCAT communication system on chip (SoC) that will help boost production efficiency in factories. It is intended for use in slave devices, such as sensors and actuators, and in I/O modules equipped with communication functions.

The product controls the EtherCAT slave controller, an industrial network protocol. It also simplifies the adaption of EtherCAT by allowing users to get started with development of an EtherCAT slave with a short development time to build slave devices such as remote I/O. It enables users to switch to a different communication protocol without an enormous workload, so they can concentrate on developing the applications themselves.

The SoC integrates CPU and RAM on a single chip that can manage all the processing necessary for EtherCAT communication. By connecting to an existing system via a serial interface, it is easy to upgrade the existing system to a system supporting EtherCAT. For development of remote I/O systems, for example, a single EC-1 SoC is sufficient for both application processing and EtherCAT communication.