‘World’s first’ two channel, single chip IO-Link solution
Renesas Electronics has claimed to produce the 'world's first' single chip device to integrate a complete two channel master transceiver along with the master software stack, operating on the 78K0R cpu core.
The development of the new two channel single chip IO-Link solution for IO-Link master applications comes from close cooperation with its business partners ELMOS Semiconductor and TMG-Karlsruhe.
According to Renesas, the new IO-Link combines their 78K0R based 16bit microcontrollers (mcu) and the two channel Elmos IO-Link transceiver, in a 9 x 9mm QFN package. It has been designed to offer integration into existing fieldbus or Industrial Ethernet environments, process parameter and diagnostics data in one cable, and contain compatible cabling to existing sensor communication.
The concept aims to allow development of a scalable solution with up to 32 channels when combining several of the IO-link master chips via a single SPI based sum protocol.
