Renesas Electronics Corporation, a provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced a new industrial microprocessor (MPU) that supports the EtherCAT communications protocol – achieving accurate, high-speed real-time control for industrial systems.
The RZ/T2L MPU inherits the hardware architecture of its state-of-the-art product, the RZ/T2M, and provides optimized solutions for the rapidly growing EtherCAT communication market.
The new MPU delivers accurate, high-speed real-time processing performance needed for AC servo drives, inverters, industrial robots, collaborative robots and more – reducing chip size by up to 50% compared to RZ/T2M.
The new device is ideal for factory automation (FA) and a wide range of applications such as medical equipment and building automation (BA), where EtherCAT is increasingly being adopted.
“Accurate real-time control is essential for improving productivity and product quality in industrial systems,” said Hitoshi Shirakabe, vice president of Renesas Industrial Automation Business Division. “Our RZ/T2L can make this a reality and, with its support for the rapidly expanding EtherCAT market, will take performance to the next level and accelerate the automation of factories and buildings, as well as medical devices.”
“For decades, we have been committed to providing engineers with the best development tools for the latest Renesas MCUs and MPUs to enable their embedded innovations of tomorrow,” added Norbert Weiss, Managing Director of Lauterbach GmbH, a leading provider of debugging tools. and tracking. “Thanks to our great partnership with Renesas, MPU RZ/T2L industrial customers will also get highly reliable tools and excellent support from the start.”
Single-chip solutions
The RZ/T2L is equipped with 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 communication. All internal RAM of the RZ/T2L is equipped with ECC (Error Correction Code) function, as required by industrial applications.
Furthermore, the large memory (576 KB) connected directly to the CPU reduces runtime unpredictability that can be caused by cache memory and allows for reliable and deterministic processing. The RZ/T2L also offers peripheral functions such as multiprotocol encoder interfaces for angle sensors, Sigma-Delta interfaces and A/D converters.
They are organized on a dedicated low latency peripheral port (LLPP) bus connected directly to the CPU for fast and accurate real-time control capabilities.
Scalable production
The RZ/T2L uses the same architecture, including CPU, peripheral functions and internal bus, as Renesas' most sophisticated motor control MPU, RZ/T2M, to achieve the same level of performance.
Additionally, Renesas offers the flexible software package (FSP) and software development environment that are compatible with other RZ family MPUs and RA family MCUs, allowing engineers to preserve their software assets. This reduces development efforts and costs and facilitates scalable development of a wide range of products.
Functional safety and protection
The RZ/T2L can be used as a functional safety MPU to meet the increasing processing requirements to achieve functional safety in industrial equipment. Renesas will provide self-diagnosis software and SIL3 system software kits in the fourth quarter of 2023, which enable customers to reduce development efforts and costs to develop functional safety systems.
The RZ/T2L supports multiple security functions such as secure boot, secure firmware update, JTAG authentication, unique ID, and cryptographic accelerator to reduce the risk of data breach and user program tampering. Renesas will offer the security software suite as part of a security solution in May 2023.
