Industrial Automation Magazine India

To mark 20 years of EtherCAT, the ETG published node figures for the first time last year.

April 24, 2024 – The strong growth of EtherCAT continues: the EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) now counts a total of 77 million EtherCAT nodes worldwide, with 18 million added in 2023 alone. These figures are based on EtherCAT chips sold. To mark 20 years of EtherCAT, the ETG published node figures for the first time last year, which is why they are not yet included in the usual market studies.

"The number of new EtherCAT nodes added in 2023 is impressive. We had assumed that chip sales would fall drastically after the end of the semiconductor crisis, as everyone had stockpiled significantly more chips than were needed in the short term," explains Martin Rostan, Executive Director of the EtherCAT Technology Group. "In addition, the market as a whole cooled down last year. Nevertheless, EtherCAT growth continues without interruption."

The figure is based on the EtherCAT chips sold throughout 2023, not including chips for individual I/O terminals. For example, an I/O station with 50 EtherCAT Bus Terminals only counts as a single node. Counting chips does lead to a certain time lag, as not every chip immediately becomes an EtherCAT device. However, it is more accurate than other methods. Chips with multi-protocol capability are counted according to their EtherCAT use: these quantities are therefore only included proportionally. Anyone who thinks that the ETG figures have been generously calculated for marketing purposes is wrong: on the contrary, the counting method is comparatively cautious, but the figures are very accurate.

The EtherCAT Technology Group was reluctant to publish node numbers until last year. One reason was that the number of devices based on FPGAs can only be estimated, in contrast to chip sales. These used to account for a higher proportion of implementations. In the figures now published, FPGAs only account for 10 percent, so that a certain amount of blurring here has no significant impact on the overall figure.

The EtherCAT Technology Group's membership figures also continue to grow. With over 7600 member companies from 74 countries, the ETG remains the world's largest fieldbus user organisation. Despite the current challenging economic conditions, membership growth has even accelerated in the past 12 months, with the ETG reporting over 500 new members in 2023.

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