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To Infineon & beyond! - RS takes Ethercat in new directions, with lo cost M4 uC

As part of an impressive increase in their combined Infineon and International Rectifier stocked range, and following fast on the heels of the XMC4800 family (the World’s first microcontroller with integrated Ethercat® for next generation PLCs) the XMC4300 range with it’s lower cost base enables Ethercat® to go where it has never gone before. Ethercat® / CAN gateways are also possible through the DMA functionality, and the integrated PLL provides the 25Mhz Ethercat® clock to further reduce complexity and cost.

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As well as being an effective and very capable uC for more typical real time industrial control applications, the Infineon XMC4300 family extends the range of the Industrial wired Ethercat® network into lower cost remote control and monitoring applications, which have been prohibitively expensive until now due to the need for separate Ethercat® ASICs. Industrial wired networking is becoming one of the hotbeds of IoT as the benefits are immediately required and realisable, and the XMC 43/48 families are well positioned to be at the heart of this growth. A clear advantage for wired IoT in critical system and factory automation applications is the reduced security challenges over those faced on wireless systems, in that they can be closed and secure.

BUY A XMC4800 Relax EtherCAT KIT

Introduced under RS stock number (917-3429) Infineon’s XMC4300F100K256AA has been chosen as the lead device, supported by an impressive development environment including an XMC4300RelaxEtherCAT Arduino shield style board (111-3726 Available from 9th May), a Segger Debugger (111-3727 Available from 9th May), and the DAVE (free to download) software and applications suite.

In addition to the Ethercat® node, Infineon Technologies ARM® Cortex® M microcontroller XMC4300 has several other features like on-chip flash and analogue/mixed signals capability. With its flexible design and EtherCAT® communication it means, there is no need for an EtherCAT® ASIC, significantly reducing costs and creating more space on the PCB. The microcontroller has full pin/code compatibility within the XMC4000 family. The XMC4300 enhanced MCU can be found in sense and control, memory interfaces, power conversion and Industrial connectivity/control applications, complementing the ARM® Cortex® M4 based XMC4700 CAN (i.e. 917-3407) and XMC4800 EtherCAT® microcontrollers (917-3413), (917-3422) and (917-3425) that offer more extensive 2 MB Flash/352 kB RAM in several package types for higher spec PLC and multi motor control applications.

 

Product Group Manager - Semiconductors
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