What is the name of your product?

EtherCAT G

What problem does your product solve?

The real-time fieldbus EtherCAT reaches the next performance level with EtherCAT G. Speeds of 1 Gbit/s or 10 Gbit/s respectively are now available for use in high-performance machines and highly complex applications, such as vision cameras, complex motion systems or measurement technology components with high sampling rates. The data transfer rate of 100 Mbit/s currently used by EtherCAT can thus be increased by a factor of 100. Both performance steps can be regarded as system-compliant supplements to the EtherCAT technology.

What is new/innovative about it?

EtherCAT has always been characterised by performance and simplicity. These characteristics are retained in EtherCAT G – without changes of protocol or software adaptations in the EtherCAT master. EtherCAT G is now raising the EtherCAT technology to the next performance level and uses the 1 Gbit/s data transfer rate of standard Ethernet; the EtherCAT G10 variant presented as a technology study even achieves a data transfer rate of 10 Gbit/s.

What is the product’s main benefit for the customer?

With EtherCAT G and G10 we are reaching a new performance level that can help our customers to build the world's best and highest performing machines. All tried-and-tested principles such as "processing on the fly" or "distributed clocks" are retained and, together with the increase in speed, enable controllers to be implemented with even higher performance.

Can these benefits be expressed in numbers?

EtherCAT G uses the 1 Gbit/s data transfer rate of standard Ethernet; the EtherCAT G10 variant presented as a technology study even achieves a data transfer rate of 10 Gbit/s. The data transfer rate of 100 Mbit/s currently used by standard EtherCAT can thus be increased by a factor of 100.

Why would you call your product “intelligent”?

As a high-performance fieldbus system, EtherCAT is the "nervous system" of a machine or plant. EtherCAT G enables machine and plant manufacturers to build the most intelligent, highest performing machines on the basis of PC-based control solutions from Beckhoff.