Hardware RTOS speeds industrial Ethernet chip

Renesas has announced a series of industrial Ethernet communication chips with support for multiple communication protocols.

Called R-IN32M3, the devices have their real-time operating system (RTOS) function implemented hardware using the Artesso architecture of Kernelon Silicon, alongside a 100MHz ARM Cortex-M3 CPU.

“Because the hardware covers heavy load operations for the CPU, the combination of the CPU and integrated hardware RTOS result in responsiveness five to ten times that of a conventional software real-time OS,” claimed the firm. “In addition, the fluctuation caused by inconsistencies in the operation time with conventional CPU processing is reduced substantially from one-fifth to one-tenth of the previous level.”

Protocols such as CC-Link IE and EtherCAT are supported, as well as the automotive CAN (control area network) protocol which has been adopted so enthusiastically by industrial users – and conventional UART.

“There are also plans to provide support for the SSCNET III/H optical network standard, which uses fully synchronous communication,” said Renesas.

R-IN32M3-CL is the variant with a slave controller for supporting 1Gbit/s CC-Link IE Field as a circuit.

The -EC variant has a slave for EtherCAT with a 10/100Mbit/s EtherPHY.