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ASIX Electronics Corporation

Product Design Article

Release Date: 2025/3/6

Best Practices for Implementing AX58400 EtherCAT Slave Solutions

This article aims to introduce how to quickly implement EtherCAT slave products using ASIX’s

AX58400 EtherCAT slave reference design kits.

With the continuous innovation in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics technology, the industrial

automation industry is moving towards a smarter and more efficient future. EtherCAT technology has

the characteristics of high performance, ultra-low latency, reliability, precise time synchronization and

low cost, and has become the mainstream standard in the industrial automation industry today. This

article outlines how to use ASIX’s AX58400 EtherCAT Slave Reference Design Kits to quickly

implement cost-effective EtherCAT slave products and expedite the process of industrial automation

in enterprises.

EtherCAT Industrial Ethernet Chip: High Speed, Reliability, and Ultra-Low Latency

Utilizing the unique 'processing on the fly' data exchange mechanism, EtherCAT technology fully

utilizes Ethernet bandwidth, dramatically reducing data transmission latency to less than 1us, thereby

ensuring the real-time and deterministic industrial automation communications. ASIX Electronics has

introduced the AX58x00 family EtherCAT slave controllers, including the AX58100, AX58200, and

AX58400. These chips have been recognized by the EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) and are

officially listed in the ETG’s EtherCAT Product Guide.

Figure-1. ETG Product Guide - AX58x00 Family EtherCAT Slave Controllers

The AX58400 EtherCAT Slave Controller with Dual-Core MCU integrates the STMicroelectronics

STM32H755 dual-core microcontroller, featuring 32-bit 480MHz ARM Cortex-M7 and 240MHz

ARM Cortex-M4 cores, and incorporates an EtherCAT slave controller equipped with two fast

Ethernet PHYs. It supports various communication and control interfaces, including a 10/100M

Ethernet MAC with MII/RMII, USB 2.0 OTG, SPI, UART, I2C, JPEG hardware codec, and more.

Additionally, it also supports AES/TDES/HASH/HMAC hardware cryptographic accelerators and

ROP/PCROP/Anti-tamper security techniques.