Renesas Electronics Europe developed a 4x7mm IO-Link slave solution that includes the manufacturer's All Flash 78K0R 16-bit microcontroller and an ELMOS IO-Link physical layer transceiver. The new solution is equipped with a ball grid array (BGA) package with a pin pitch of 0.5mm in which the balls are arranged in two rows around the edge of the chip, making it easier for system designers to mount the chip on the circuit board.

Like the existing Renesas Electronics IO-Link slave solutions, TMG's IO-Link slave protocol stack software is compliant with the latest IO-Link standard and is available with the new solution, making it simple to implement.

IO-Link is the new standard serial digital communications protocol used for sensors and actuators in industrial automation systems. It is compatible for integration into existing field bus or industrial Ethernet environments, compatible with the cabling to existing sensor communication, and it enables process, parameter and diagnosis data all in one cable.

The key advantage of the new solution is that it enables system designers to save significant board space, which is essential for the latest SFF sensor designs. PCBs in these sensors measure as little as 5mm wide, making conventional solutions unfeasible and complex.

Designs using separate devices for MCU and transceiver take up more space due to the routing of signals between these devices and the overall size of the devices themselves.

Renesas Electronics plans to deliver samples of the small package IO-Link slave controller in Q3 2010.