Renesas Expands Ecosystem for Its R-IN32M3 Industrial Network Devices to Deliver up to 5X Improvement in Overall Network Performance

SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 18, 2014 — Renesas Electronics America Inc., a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today expands the ecosystem around its R-IN32M3 industrial network controller ICs with the announcement of new partner IP and tools that simplify development and speed market entry for industrial networking applications up to 5X1. Micrium’s new uC/OS-III® HW-RTOS takes advantage of the hardware real-time operating system (RTOS) accelerator of the R-IN32M3; Real Time Automation becomes the newest protocol stack partner; and IAR Systems releases a low-cost hardware starter kit, IAR KickStart Kit™ for R-IN32M3.

The R-IN32M3 application specific standard product (ASSP) is used for real-time network communication in gateways, I/O controllers, PLCs/PACs, embedded controllers, industrial drives and countless other networked applications. The device significantly improves industrial network with optimized hardware accelerators, while reducing costs by supporting multiple protocols such as EtherCAT®, CC-Link® IE, Ethernet/IP®, Profinet®, CANopen® and others, from a single device. The exceptional design flexibility of the R-IN32M3 allows one system design to serve a diversity of networks and applications.

"Renesas helps industrial OEM manufacturers solve their connectivity requirements with silicon and software solutions that meet the stringent real-time networking needs of today’s factory equipment," says Ritesh Tyagi, vice president of marketing, Renesas Electronics America, Inc. "Customers will benefit from our strong partner ecosystem that includes IP, protocol stacks and tools that take full advantage of the features of the R-IN32M3 for faster networking performance, while lowering costs compared to conventional approaches."

Micrium, a leader in real-time operating systems and embedded software, released a new uC/OS-III HW-RTOS, based on the company’s highly successful uC/OS-III RTOS. The Micrium uC/OS-III HW-RTOS implements a subset of the uC/OS-III API capitalizing on the Renesas R IN32M3 "Hardware RTOS" features. The uC/OS-III HW-RTOS provides task, semaphore, event flags, queues and other commonly used management features and significantly increases the responsiveness to real-time events.

"The uC/OS-III HW-RTOS lets users easily migrate their uC/OS-III-based application to leverage the enhanced performance provided by the R-IN32M3 hardware-assisted RTOS acceleration," says Jean Labrosse, founder and CEO of Micrium. "Commonly used RTOS operations execute up to 3X faster than their equivalent software implemented counterparts."

The Renesas R-IN32M3 is designed to support multiple industrial protocols from a single device. On-chip slave controllers such as EtherCAT or CC-Link IE remove the need for any additional licensing, or costly ASICs or FPGAs. In addition, a unique Ethernet accelerator improves networking performance for software-based protocols such as Ethernet/IP, Profinet, and Modbus TCP.

Real Time Automation, a leading industrial networking software company, has ported and pre-tested its certified stacks, including Ethernet/IP, Profinet IO, and CANopen on the R-IN32M3. "In my thirty years of industrial networking, I have never seen an ASSP controller better equipped than the R-IN32M3 for industrial automation and networking. It meets the need to provide connectivity across both the factory floor and enterprise," notes John Rinaldi, president of Real Time Automation.

To speed development, IAR Systems, a leader in embedded software tools, has launched its low-cost IAR KickStart Kit for R-IN32M3. The kit contains the hardware and tools necessary to quickly evaluate the features of the R-IN32M3 and can leverage Micrium’s new uC/OS III HW-RTOS and protocol stack IP available from platform ecosystem partners.

"IAR Systems is pleased to support the entire Renesas MCU and MPU families and our message remains clear and consistent as we grow our relationship with the company," comments Robert DeOliveira, director global strategic sales at IAR Systems. "We are extremely excited to work with Renesas, as well as Micrium and RTA to support the R-IN32M3 with a new easy-to-use evaluation kit that includes an R-IN32M3 evaluation board, our best-in-class compiler and debugger toolchain, the IAR Embedded Workbench® for ARM, and useful examples for R-IN32M3 implementation."

Renesas also works with a full range of industrial automation partners to support many of today’s complex industrial automation applications from PLCs/PACs, industrial drives, functional safety and industrial sensors.

R-IN32M3 Key Features:

• ARM® Cortex™ M3-based CPU subsystem clocked at 100MHz clock speed
• Hardware accelerators improve efficiency and offloads from the main CPU
  • Hardware Real-time OS Accelerator (HW-RTOS)
  • Hardware Ethernet Accelerators (IP/TCP/UDP Check Sum, Header ENDEC, Buffer manager)
• 1.3M bytes of on-chip RAM
• Dual-channel 10/100 Ethernet (with dual-channel PHY included²)
• EtherCAT or CC-Link IE slave controller on-chip (license free)
• 2-port real-time Gigabit switch, supports cut-through and store and forward operating modes, as well as support for IEEE1588 PTP and Device-Level-Ring (DLR) protocols
• High-speed, real-time port with dedicated DMAC
• Many peripherals and GPIOs

Availability

The R-IN32M3-EC (EtherCAT enabled) and R-IN32M3-CL (CC-Link IE enabled) ICs are available worldwide through Renesas regional offices. For further information, documentation and support, please visit the Renesas Electronics America website at www.renesas.com/rin32.

Tools and stacks are available through Micrium (uC/OS-III HW-RTOS), Real Time Automation (protocol stacks) and IAR Systems (design tools).

About Renesas Electronics America Inc.

Renesas Electronics America, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), the world's number one supplier of microcontrollers and a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions including microcontrollers, SoC solutions, and a broad range of analog and power devices. More information about the products offered by Renesas Electronics America can be found at www.renesas.com.

Note:
1: Average result measuring UDP throughput compared with comparable ARM Cortex M3 MCU
2: Dual-channel PHY is included on the R-IN32M3-EC version only

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