Renesas Industrial MPU Enables Fast, Accurate Real-time Control

Article By : Renesas Electronics Corp.

Renesas' RZ/T2L MPU provides optimized solutions for the fast-growing EtherCAT communication market.

Renesas Electronics Corp. has launched a new industrial microprocessor (MPU) that supports the EtherCAT communication protocol, achieving high-speed, accurate real-time control for industrial systems.

The RZ/T2L MPU inherits the hardware architecture of its higher-end product, the RZ/T2M, and provides optimized solutions for the fast-growing EtherCAT communication market. The new MPU delivers high-speed and accurate real-time processing performance required for AC servo drives, inverters, industrial robots, collaborative robots and others, while reducing the chip size by up to 50% compared to the RZ/T2M. The new device is ideal for factory automation (FA) and a broad range of applications such as medical equipment and building automation (BA), where EtherCAT is increasingly becoming adopted.

The RZ/T2L is equipped with an Arm Cortex-R52 CPU with a maximum operating frequency of 800MHz and a proven EtherCAT slave controller designed by Beckhoff Automation for Ethernet communication. All internal RAM of the RZ/T2L is equipped with the ECC (Error Correction Code) function as required by industrial applications. Additionally, the large (576kB) memory directly connected to the CPU reduces unpredictability in execution time that can be caused by cache memory and enables reliable, deterministic processing. The RZ/T2L also offers peripheral functions such as multi-protocol encoder interfaces for angle sensors, Sigma-Delta interfaces, and A/D converters. These are arranged on a dedicated low-latency peripheral port (LLPP) bus directly connected to the CPU to achieve fast and accurate real-time control capabilities.

The RZ/T2L uses the same architecture including the CPU, peripheral functions, and internal bus, as Renesas’ most high-end motor control MPU, RZ/T2M to realize the same performance level. In addition, 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 array of products.

The RZ/T2L can be used as a functional safety MPU to meet the growing processing requirements to realize functional safety in industrial equipment. Renesas will provide self-diagnostic software and SIL3 system software kits in Q4/2023, which allow customers to reduce development efforts and costs to develop functional safety systems. In addition, the RZ/T2L supports various security functions such as secure boot, secure firmware update, JTAG authentication, unique ID, and cryptographic accelerator to reduce the risk of data breach and tampering of user programs. Renesas will offer the security software package as part of a security solution in May 2023.

 

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