🚀 Renesas's Single-Chip Revolution for Industrial Automation and Robotics: The RZ/T2N Processor! 🤖

[Elif Özaksu]

Four-Axis Motor Control, Industrial Ethernet, and Linux Processing on a Single Chip​

Renesas Electronics has introduced its groundbreaking RZ/T2N 64-bit microprocessor (MPU) for industrial automation and robotics. This single-chip solution combines high-precision real-time motor control, fieldbus connectivity, and Linux application processing into a single integrated circuit, reducing hardware complexity and supporting compact equipment designs.

End of Multi-Chip Architectures​

Traditional industrial automation controllers used to divide workloads among separate physical chips. This led to PCB routing bottlenecks and inter-chip communication delays. The RZ/T2N eliminates this multi-device scheme by integrating application and deterministic computing cores onto a single die.

Heterogeneous Multi-Core Architecture​

• Application Processing: Two Arm Cortex-A55 cores, running at up to 1.2 GHz, provide the processing power required for Linux execution, edge computing, and controller tasks.
  
• Deterministic Control: Two Arm Cortex-R52 cores, running at up to 800 MHz, execute deterministic control loops.
  

Each Cortex-R52 core features 576 KB of tightly coupled memory (TCM) equipped with Error Correction Code (ECC) to prevent execution time jitter during high-speed PWM calculations. This ensures zero-wait-state instruction and data access, guaranteeing deterministic performance.

Four-Axis Motion Peripherals and Multi-Protocol Encoder Interfaces​

The RZ/T2N includes peripheral hardware capable of directly driving four independent motor axes from the MPU in SCARA and delta robotic systems. Each axis has two dedicated encoder interface channels to monitor dual feedback loops, such as motor-side speed and load-side absolute position. Supported encoder standards include Tamagawa T-Format, HIPERFACE DSL, A-format, EnDat 2.2, EnDat 3, BiSS C, and BiSS Line.

Integrated Industrial Ethernet and Hardware Redundancy​

The MPU comes with an integrated Ethernet subsystem and can operate as both a main network controller and a subordinate field device. This communication block includes three Gigabit Ethernet MACs (GMACs), an integrated Ethernet switch, and a dedicated EtherCAT Slave Controller (ESC). Supported protocols include EtherCAT, PROFINET RT and IRT, EtherNet/IP, and Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) mechanisms.

To ensure uptime in critical production networks, the subsystem accommodates hardware-accelerated redundancy protocols such as High-Availability Seamless Redundancy (HSR), Parallel Redundancy Protocol (PRP), and Frame Replication and Elimination for Reliability (FRER) under IEEE 802.1CB. Security is provided by Arm TrustZone, secure boot authentication, and encrypted firmware update lines.

Software Ecosystem and Future Plans​

Software development utilizes a unified Renesas Flexible Software Package (FSP) and a shared Linux distribution compatible with the RZ/T2 and RZ/N2 series. Certified functional safety software packages compliant with IEC 61508 standards are planned for release in the second half of 2027.