GigaDevice EtherCAT® SubDevice Controller Chip (Photo: Business Wire)
MUNICH, November 12, 2024--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GigaDevice (Stock Code: 603986), a leading semiconductor supplier, announced today the official launch of its EtherCAT® SubDevice Controller chip.
GigaDevice has received official authorization from Beckhoff and launched its first EtherCAT® SubDevice Controller, GDSCN832, along with the ultra-high performance industrial automation MCU series GD32H75E, which incorporates the EtherCAT® SubDevice Controller. These new products are tailored to meet the demands of the industrial automation market, providing optimal solutions for applications such as servo control, variable frequency drives, industrial PLCs, and communication modules, thanks to their exceptional processing power and extensive interface resources. Samples and development boards are now available, with mass production scheduled for 2nd quarter of 2025.
EtherCAT® SubDevice Controller: Achieving Ultra-Fast Response Time
The GDSCN832 series is a 2/3-port EtherCAT® SubDevice Controller integrating two internal PHYs and one MII extension interface. It has a dual-channel integrated Ethernet physical layer device, with each channel offering a full-duplex 100BASE-TX transceiver supporting 100 Mbps operation. This series supports eight Fieldbus Memory Management Units (FMMU), enhancing data processing performance and security while effectively reducing memory access latency to improve system response time and real-time performance, providing users with high flexibility in data mapping. Additionally, it supports eight Sync Manager entities for efficient memory management.
The GDSCN832 series includes up to 8 KB of Dual-Port RAM (DPRAM), facilitating large data processing capabilities for complex control systems. It incorporates a 64-bit distributed clock with a host bus interface that achieves equivalent functionality through high-speed synchronous/asynchronous device interfaces, with a precision below 1 µs. This product series supports 8/16-bit serial/parallel port communication, SPI/QSPI/OSPI device interfaces with communication speeds up to 100 MHz, and EXMC synchronous mode. Its diverse interface options provide users with greater flexibility in interface configuration. An integrated 1.1V core regulator supports operation with a single 3.3V power supply and allows for variable voltage I/O from 1.8V to 3.3V. The GDSCN832 supports HP Auto-MDIX, enabling direct or crossover LAN cable connections. Four low-power modes are available to balance energy efficiency and power consumption.
With its high integration, flexibility, and stability, the GDSCN832 is ideal for applications such as motor motion control, data acquisition, industrial automation, communication modules, and sensors. The series comes in a compact QFN64 package, along with a development and evaluation board, providing a cost-effective EtherCAT® SubDevice Controller device solution for developers.
GD32H75E Series EtherCAT® Industrial Automation MCUs: Combining Superior Control and Efficient Communication Capabilities
GigaDevice has launched the GD32H75E series, its first high-performance MCU product authorized by Beckhoff to integrate the EtherCAT® SubDevice Controller. Combining the GDSCN832 series chip with a high-performance MCU, this product offers a seamless solution for diverse industrial automation applications, including servo motor control, variable frequency drives, industrial PLCs, and communication modules. Building on the exceptional features of the GD32H7 series, the GD32H75E series uses an Arm® Cortex®-M7 high-performance core with a frequency of up to 600 MHz. It includes an advanced DSP hardware accelerator, a double-precision floating-point unit (FPU), a hardware trigonometric accelerator (TMU), and a filter algorithm accelerator (FAC). The series offers on-chip Flash memory ranging from 1024 KB to 3840 KB and 1024 KB of SRAM, with 512 KB configurable tightly coupled memory (ITCM, DTCM) for zero-wait execution of critical instructions and data. All Flash and SRAM regions support ECC verification, enhancing system reliability. Additionally, it features a 64 KB L1-Cache (I-Cache, D-Cache) to further improve CPU efficiency and real-time performance.
The GD32H75E provides a wealth of peripheral resources, including 8 USARTs, 4 I2Cs, 6 SPIs, 4 I2S, and an 8-line OSPI (backward compatible with 4-line QSPI). It supports 2 USB 2.0 OTG interfaces with Full Speed and High Speed modes and includes 3 CAN-FD controllers. The series also features four 32-bit general-purpose timers, twelve 16-bit general-purpose timers, four 64-bit/32-bit basic timers, and two advanced PWM timers. Two 14-bit ADCs provide sampling rates up to 4 MSPS, with one 12-bit ADC reaching 5.3 MSPS, along with a fast comparator (COMP) and DAC for high-precision analog functions. A high-performance digital filter module (HPDF) for external Σ-Δ modulators and an encoder divide output controller (EDOUT) are also integrated, making it ideal for high-precision motion control systems.
The GD32H75E series includes two BGA240 package models, supporting internal PHY or bypass mode for flexible configuration based on application needs. The corresponding documentation and software resources are available on GigaDevice’s official website for easy access. Additionally, GigaDevice provides a free development environment, GD32 IDE, along with debugging and programming tools like GD-LINK and GD32 All-In-One Programmer. Leading embedded tool providers, including Arm® KEIL, IAR, and SEGGER, also offer full support for development, compilation, and trace debugging tools, delivering a user-friendly development and debugging experience.
