In today's industrial automation and process control environments, factories want easier-managed networks with higher bandwidth and performance at a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Altera and its partners offer a comprehensive portfolio of industrial networking solutions and intellectual property (IP) that give you a high degree of design flexibility and enable you to do the following:
- Design a single hardware platform that can support multiple Industrial Ethernet and fieldbus protocol standards using a Cyclone® III or Cyclone IV FPGA. Get started quickly with the Cyclone IV E Industrial Networking Kit (INK)
- Reconfigure the FPGA during manufacturing or even in the field to accommodate any changes in Ethernet specifications
- Eliminate multiple dedicated adapter cards that support different standards
Coupled with the long life cycle of FPGAs, this will, over time, drive down your TCO and increase productivity. FPGAs can be used as either the communication coprocessor in the system or as the system on a chip (SoC) that integrates industrial networking, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. SoC FPGA Example – Motion Control with Industrial Networking
Our Industrial Networking Partner Program (INPP) provides an ecosystem of established networking experts that enables you to evaluate various Cyclone III and Cyclone IV Industrial Ethernet and fieldbus solutions on a common hardware platform. These partners provide OpenCore Plus IP, reference designs, and design services to meet your network communication and FPGA development needs. Table 1 shows Industrial Ethernet solutions from Altera partners.
| Table 1. Industrial Ethernet Solutions | |||||||||
| Partner | Industrial Networking Protocol Standards | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EtherNet/IP | EtherCAT | Powerlink | PROFINET | Modbus TCP | SERCOS III | TTEthernet | IEEE 1588 | ||
| IXXAT |  |
|
|
|
|
|
- | |
|
| Softing | |
|
- | |
|
- | - | - | |
| Beckhoff | - | |
- | - | - | - | - | - | |
| Automata | - | - | - | - | - | |
- | - | |
| MorethanIP | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | |
|
| Zhaw, I/F/I | - | - | - | |
- | - | - | |
|
| TTTech | - | - | - | - | - | - | |
- | |
Related Links
- Whitepaper: Five Ways to Build Flexibility into Your Industrial Applications with FPGAs (PDF)
- Whitepaper: Lowering the Total Cost of Ownership in Industrial Applications (PDF)
- Whitepaper: A Flexible Solution for Industrial Ethernet (PDF)
- Webcast: Three Reasons to Use FPGAs in Industrial Applications
- Webcast: Achieve Lower Total Cost of Ownership for Industrial Designs
- Video: Three Ways to Quickly Adapt to Changing Ethernet Protocols
- Industrial Networking Partner Program
- Embedded processors for Altera FPGAs
- SoC FPGA overview
