XMOS is aiming for embedded industrial designs with the introduction of industrial Fieldbus capabilities within its xCORE family of multicore microcontrollers.
Initially, this will include Fieldbus xSOFTip soft peripherals and an industrial serial bus (IS-BUS) I/O card (sliceCARD) for its modular sliceKIT development system. This supports communication via RS485, CAN and LIN.
Further industrial products will follow throughout 2013.
xCORE architectureThe company said the deterministic, low latency xCORE architecture can benefit industrial products ranging from simple sensors and actuators to protocol bridges, high-performance PLCs and motor controllers.
“The industrial market is characterised by a diversity of communication protocols, both standard and proprietary,” said Paul Neil, v-p of product management at XMOS.
“The xCORE multicore microcontrollers can be programmed to support these different requirements, whether you’re implementing a proprietary protocol in software, customising one of the many Fieldbus standards, or implementing real-time extensions to a complex networking protocol like Ethernet," said Neil.
Industrial applications need to close multiple asynchronous control loops in real time, and often require distributed intelligence and communication over real-time networks.
The multicore microcontroller can be used to provide real-time control and communications in a single, deterministic, multicore architecture. It can replace multiple devices with a single multicore microcontroller.
The IS-BUS sliceCARD (priced at $40) is available from XMOS distributor partners starting February 2013.