ASIX Electronics Corp., a leading fabless semiconductor company for industrial/embedded networking/bridging solutions, today announces a new AX58100 2/3-port EtherCAT Slave Controller (ESC) to add a new product portfolio for the rapidly growing Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing market. The AX58100 includes eight Fieldbus Memory Management Units (FMMUs), eight Sync Managers, 64-bit distributed clock and 8Kbytes Dual-Port RAM (DPRAM) and integrates two embedded Fast Ethernet PHYs which can support both copper and fiber industrial Ethernet applications.

The AX58100 is interoperable with all EtherCAT systems with standard EtherCAT protocols such as CANopen over EtherCAT (CoE), File Access over EtherCAT (FoE), Vendor Specific-protocol over EtherCAT (VoE), etc. The AX58100 provides a cost-effective EtherCAT solution for industrial automation, motion/motor/Digital IO control, Digital to Analog (DAC)/Analog to Digital (ADC) converters control, sensors data acquisition, robotics, etc. industrial fieldbus applications.

Compared to other EtherCAT slave controller solutions, the AX58100 supports some additional interfaces such as Pulse Width Modulation (PWM), Incremental/Hall Encoder, SPI master, Emergency Stop Input, etc. for designers to easily implement AX58100 on different EtherCAT industrial fieldbus applications. The AX58100 provides either a three-channel PWM controller or a Step/Direction controller, and an Incremental/Hall Encoder interface for closed-loop motion/motor control applications; provides a SPI master controller for Digital to Analog (DAC)/Analog to Digital (ADC) converters control applications and sensors data acquisition applications; provides 32 Digital I/Os (DIO) for industrial fieldbus I/O control applications; and also provides an I/O watchdog and an emergency stop input for industrial automation functional safety applications.

The AX58100 provides SPI slave and Local bus Process Data Interfaces (PDI) to provide an easy way for system designers to implement the standard EtherCAT communication functionalities on those traditional non-EtherCAT MCU and DSP industrial platforms.

To help customers evaluate and develop applications with AX58100 EtherCAT slave controller, ASIX provides comprehensive technical support including reference schematics, PCB design guidelines, hardware/software application notes, user guides, software firmware, etc., and also provides AX58100 evaluation boards for designers to easily evaluate the AX58100 EtherCAT slave controller functionalities.

The AX58100 is available in 80-pin LQFP RoHS compliant package, in operating temperature range from -40 to +105°C. For more information, please contact ASIX Electronics Corp. via e-mail: sales@asix.com.tw, or visit our website: www.asix.com.tw.