Renesas Electronics Corporation, a leading provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, unveiled the RZ/T2M motor control microprocessor units (MPUs) with the highest performance for applications such as AC servo drives and industrial robots. On a single chip, the RZ/T2M combines rapid and highly precise realtime motor control with the newest industrial Ethernet, as well as functional safety operation. Customers can reduce the number of external components in their BOMs and product sizes by using the RZ/T2M, which provides all important peripheral functions for motor control.
The RZ/T2M is made up of two Arm® Cortex®-R52 cores that operate at a maximum frequency of 800 MHz. The peripheral functions required for motor control are connected to a dedicated bus that is directly connected to the CPU, allowing the CPU to access these operations with minimal delay. Furthermore, the huge memory capacity (576 KB) is firmly associated with the CPU, eliminating the variance in execution time that can occur when cache memory is used and ensuring deterministic, rapid processing. These features enable the RZ/T2M to provide fast and precise control for high-performance applications such AC servos, inverters, and industrial robots.
Renesas has added support for the PROFINET IRT protocol to the RZ/T2M, in addition to important industrial networking protocols such as EtherCAT, PROFINET RT, and EtherNet/IP. The new MPU also has an Ethernet switch that supports the next-generation Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) standard, which allows numerous devices to run in perfect synchrony.
In most cases, adding two external MCUs for safety monitoring increases BOM costs when developing industrial equipment that meets functional safety criteria. Because the RZ/T2M has a hardware configuration that is optimized for functional safety, just one external MCU is required to implement functional safety. In addition to motor control and network connection, the RZ/T2M may execute functional safety operations.
Renesas also plans to release functional safety solutions later this year, including a SIL3-certified software kit combination that includes a self-test software kit that allows the RZ/T2M to self-diagnose failures and a SIL3 system software kit for mutual diagnosis and software isolation functionality. The new RZ/T2M processors will be supported by IAR Embedded Workbench for Arm Functional Safety Edition, an integrated development environment approved for functional safety-related development and a necessary tool for implementing the above software.
Functional safety continues to be an important requirement for many of our customers. Companies choosing the new Renesas’ RZ/T2M in their next design can be sure that IAR Systems will support them with certified development tools and professional technical support globally, substantially reducing both design time and project cost.”
Anders Holmberg, CTO at IAR Systems