Renesas Electronics Corporation Expands Lineup of Ethernet PHY Chips with Two Single-Channel Industrial Ethernet PHY Chips

Recently, there has been a growing demand among manufacturing companies for intelligent field devices that can capture and transmit information within the factory. This requirement for more efficiency and transparency has accelerated the adoption of industrial Ethernet to interconnect industrial automation systems. The multiple differences between this environment and PC-based and consumer applications have provided the impetus for the development of new standards based on the IEEE802.3 standard. Examples of these differences compared to consumer PHY devices include the need for determinism, real-time and diagnostics features, a high level of reliability, and an extended lifecycle. Renesas prioritised all of these capabilities when developing its new PHY family for industrial automation applications.



Key features of the µPD60610 and µPD60611 PHY devices:

(1) Specific focus on lowest system latency and jitter

The new PHY devices deliver high-speed real-time data transmission and error-free reception due to their low node latency and low jitter.

(2) Enhanced link control

The new single-channel PHY devices provide high-speed link-up and link-down control which is ideally suited to robotics and similar applications.

(3) Enhanced diagnostics features for permanent cable quality monitoring

Renesas Electronics’ new PHY devices provide the fast link-loss recognition needed by real-time protocols like PROFINET, SERCOSIII and EtherCAT. They also support cable quality monitoring to facilitate maintenance and repair work.

(4) Support of IEEE1588 V2 standard



The µPD60611 single-channel PHY device supports the precision time protocol (PTP) based on the IEEE1588-V2 standard. This enables one-step and two-step mode operations and a number of time trigger outputs to external applications that need synchronous time information. The new PHY device also provides the highest accuracy levels needed for time synchronisation. This feature is required by several types of application, including motion control, AvB (audio video bridging) and sequences of events. The device also provides a 1 ns (nanosecond) accurate and precise timestamp for incoming and outgoing telegrams.



Renesas’ PHY technology benefits industrial customers who use Ethernet networks by offering unique features that have not been available in the market until now. Along with providing compatibility with standard Ethernet communication protocols such as Ethernet/IP, SERCOSIII, PROFINET or EtherCAT, the new PHY devices are also compliant with the IEEE802.3 standard and are suitable for implementation in demanding industrial environments. The new PHY chips expand Renesas’ range of product lineups for Ethernet-based industrial networks, which include Ethernet microcontrollers (MCUs) and PROFINET ASSPs, such as ERTEC and TPS-1. Renesas’ PHY technology is also available as intellectual property (IP) products for customised designs.