Did you know that all well-known chip manufacturers offer chips for IO-Link devices or masters?
All parties involved were brought in for development of IO-Link from the beginning. It appears that this was the right way to achieve standardization in the lowest device level. More than 100 companies worldwide have now implemented the IO-Link standard in their components. These include chip manufacturers that help to support the idea of IO-Link. Accordingly, over ten manufacturers have already listed their products. These offer a suitable chip for every device class, ranging from simple drivers/transceivers to microcontrollers. Several manufactures have also integrated IO-Link in their system or network controllers.
In many cases, intelligent sensors already have integrated microcontrollers so that only the very lean stack has to be integrated for expansion with IO-Link. For these devices, many manufacturers officer transceiver chips that can be easily integrated even in the tiniest sensors thanks to their low power loss and compact dimensions.
For the IO-Link masters, partial integrations (stack or portions of the stack with physical interface) all the way to complete integrated solutions (microcontroller plus stack) are available. This even includes integration of the IO-Link master interface in network controllers. The user can then provide IO-Link worldwide for every relevant fieldbus system.
From distance measurements using highly complex sensors, from small- and medium-sized companies to corporate groups, from the chip to the controller – the support of IO-Link by many manufacturers not only ensures the highest quality and a broad functionality for a wide range of industries, but it also ensures reliability with respect to planned investments.