Programmable logic offers the ultimate in flexibility and the Cyclone family of devices have been optimised for low cost and low power enabling developers to leverage all the advantages of FPGA without having to compromise on performance or cost. Cyclone III FPGAs offer you an unprecedented combination of low power, high functionality, and low cost to maximize your competitive edge.

These industry leading FPGA devices from Altera can be configured to deliver a wide range of functions including EtherCAT slave controllers.

You can create your own custom system with the EtherCAT IP core (available from Beckhoff) or, for a simpler solution, you can license a pre-built, ready-to-go FPGA configuration that contains the EtherCAT controller - this is a very easy way to get a fast solution for a FPGA based EtherCAT controller.

EtherCAT IP core features in Cyclone FPGA:

• Scaleable EtherCAT Slave controller
• Unsynchronized Slave for IO devices
• Full featured EtherCAT Slave with distributed clocks for Drive applications
• CoE (CANopen over EtherCAT) software stack and slave application executed on the versatile Nios II embedded processor
• Optional 8/16/32 Bit host interface for connection to external application microcontroller
• FPGAs can support additional custom digital logic or interfaces required by your system

Cyclone FPGA devices can also offer a wide range of functionality (e.g., microprocessors, DSP, custom logic, etc.) and interfaces (e.g. CAN, PWM, RS232, PCI, PCI Express, etc.) to address a very wide range of applications.

For information on slave controller IP, slave controller development kits please refer to the products section of the ETG site, e.g. EtherCAT IP core for Altera FPGAs ET1810 (Beckhoff), EtherCAT evaluation kits: EL98x0 (Beckhoff), MercuryCode development board (EBV Elektronik), DBC2C20 development board (EBV Elektronik), etc.