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Renesas Electronics Announces Availability of Reference Design Solution for Industrial Remote I/O Devices

REN0539_R_IN32M3_remote_I_O_solutionAs part of its lineup expansion of platform solutions for the R-IN32M3 Series of industrial Ethernet communication system-on-chips (SoCs), Renesas Electronics, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced the availability of its new Remote I/O Trial Kit – a complete hardware and software reference solution for development of Remote I/O devices typically used for I/O monitoring, communication and industrial process control. The new solution supports the EtherCAT(R) protocol and is now available.

The new reference design solution presents a further advance in Renesas’ provision of devices and development environments that reduce the system designer’s development period and provides an actual industrial equipment application as a reference design. Renesas estimates that the new solution can reduce the development steps required, from the start of product development through the design prototype completion, a process that consists of hardware design, software design, and approval acquisition, by approximately over 60 percent (source: Renesas).

The trend toward a smart factory requires that more of the I/O points need improved performance and more deterministic communication capabilities. This new crop of industrial Ethernet standards enables a network to have high-speed, real-time connectivity. However, when adopting these new industrial Ethernet technologies, large number of new development and evaluation operations are required. These include hardware design including corresponding SoC selection and circuit and layout design, implementation of industrial Ethernet protocols and application processing, functional and performance evaluation, and connection testing with master equipment such as PLC/PAC (programmable logic control/ programmable automation controller) equipment. The large number of development processes required here can lead to significant increases in the time and costs associated with the development of a new user product.

The Remote I/O Trial Kit solution will be available for limited supply to qualified system designers (Note 1) as a reference design that consists not only of an actual remote I/O module but also software, documentation, and circuit schematics. By providing this shrink-wrapped solution that has already completed all the development processes required, system designers will be able to significantly reduce the time from development to evaluation and the approval testing phase and they will profit from lower development risk and costs.

Renesas aims not only to strengthen its support for other communication standard protocols (Note 2) through collaboration with partner companies but will also continue to expand its lineup of application-oriented solutions that further contribute to reliable, fast, and timely product development of end products by system designers.

www.renesas.eu