About EtherCAT EtherCAT Technology Group

EtherCAT possesses technical features that enable high-speed, real-time industrial Ethernet. EtherCAT’s performance delivers performance improvements across a wide range of application fields.

It excels in particular in ultra-high performance; EtherCAT is generally regarded as the fastest industrial Ethernet technology, with synchronisation performance accurate to the nanosecond. This performance offers significant advantages in both control systems using fieldbus technology and measurement applications. The fast response times reduce communication waiting times during processing, thereby significantly improving application efficiency. Furthermore, when compared at the same cycle time, the architecture of an EtherCAT system generally results in a 25–30 per cent lower CPU load than other fieldbus systems. By optimising the implementation to fully utilise EtherCAT’s performance, improvements in accuracy and throughput can be expected, leading to reduced production costs.