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Real-time industrial Ethernet on low-cost FPGAs

EtherCAT on Cyclone III means simple networking support, says Altera

19th July 2007 - Designers in the industrial automation space are the target of Altera's latest announcement: the company has qualified IP to run the EtherCAT protocol on its low-cost Cyclone III FPGAs. The EtherCAT real-time industrial Ethernet protocol can update data from over 1,000 distributed I/O nodes in 30 μsec over low-cost twisted pair cables. Altera believes that factory–automation designers are under particular pressures to add new functions, with short time-to-market, in an environment where total production volumes may be limited. The company says that this IP provides a means for those designers to cost-effectively add real-time Ethernet to their product lines.
To support Cyclone III FPGA-based industrial designs, EtherCAT Technology Group members are offering development kits. The Cyclone III development kit by member company Beckhoff consists of a slave device evaluation board with an EtherCAT slave controller, the slave protocol stack in source code, reference hardware design information, an evaluation license for EtherCAT master, manuals and cables.
Industrial Ethernet solutions using Cyclone FPGAs cost from $12.50 in 1,000 unit quantities.