Renesas & Tapko Technologies unveil Twisted Pair KNX Stack for all RL78 16-bit MCUs for Industrial Applications

The KNX bus is defined by the European EN 50090 and international ISO/IEC 14543 standards. To ensure full interoperability between different vendors’ equipment, all products require a KNX certification.

Renesas selected Tapko to deliver its fully-certified KAIstack KNX communication stack, which will run on any RL78 MCU and reduce the effort and cost of KNX device development. The RL78 MCU portfolio offers a true low power platform operating down to 66µA/MHz, a scalable platform from 20 up to 128 pins (2KB up to 512KB Flash) and advanced peripherals to achieve smart efficiency. It is easy to select any RL78 MCU according the application requirements, from small sensor equipment up to complex control panels and energy management systems.

The partnership between Renesas and Tapko, a KNX expert with over 20 years’ experience, guarantees the highest reliability of the KAIstack KNX communication stack running on the RL78 MCU. KAIstack supports almost any twisted pair transceiver solution available on the market in combination with various device models and configuration modes. As a result, it covers the full KNX specification. Tapko licenses the stack and provides the necessary hardware to test and evaluate customers’ future projects.

The KNX solution is part of Renesas Electronics’ Smart Society strategy. Renesas not only provides MCUs but is also creating more and more complete embedded solutions consisting of hardware and software. According to Elodie Saint-Affre, Senior Engineer at Renesas Electronics Europe GmbH, “The KNX stack for the RL78 MCU family is the perfect example of Renesas’ commitment to Smart Home applications. Thanks to the partnership with Tapko Technologies, Renesas helps designers and programmers to speed up their development time and reduce system costs.”

KAIstack contains all the elements required by the KNX standard. It is implemented in close dependence on the ISO/OSI reference model. Advanced implementation methods allow highly efficient coding that leads to optimized resource usage. Application development with KAIstack facilitates early decisions in the design process by simple configurability of the stack. “The combination of Renesas RL78 MCU and our KAIstack increases system reliability and improves device stability,” comments Petar Tomić, CEO of Tapko Technologies.