Silicon IP Cores
Popular CAN Bus Controller Core Passes Another Rigorous Plugfest
Our colleagues from Fraunhofer IPMS recently participated in the latest CAN XL bus plugfest sponsored by the CAN in Automation (CiA) organization.
This was one of several CiA plugfests our CAN-CTRL IP core has been tested in since its release in 2014. These plugfests are an opportunity for multiple companies to gather and test how well their products work together in a simulation of the real world. Each developer of course builds to and validates against the formal protocol specification and extensively tests their own systems “in the lab,” but the plugfest’s interoperability conditions of multiple products from different sources trying to work well together can’t otherwise be easily replicated.
The April CAN XL Plugfest brought together bus controller and PHY products from Bosch, Kvaser, NXP, Vector, and other firms. These included early versions of CAN XL Signal-Improvement Capability (SIC) transceivers required to reach CAN XL’s potential data rate of 20 MBbit/s. Fraunhofer provided an FPGA board implementing the CAN-CTRL Bus Controller, CAN -SEC security accelerator, and other IP cores, managed by the EMSA5-FS RISC-V Functional Safety Processor.
The CAN-CTRL core performed successfully under all test scenarios and conditions. This included MAC layer testing, with mixed CAN CC (500kBit/s), CAN FD (2Mbit/s), and CAN XL (5Mbit/s) traffic running on the bus in the presence of errors.
As one of the first available CAN Bus Controller cores, the CAN-CTRL IP we offer has provided reliable and effective service for hundreds of customers in the many systems of vehicles you may use every day. Developers of automobiles, airplanes, trains, submarines, industrial systems, and more have fouind it to be reliable and effective. Its proven support for CAN variations through fast CAN-XL—and with CANsec for security—make the core an excellent choice for all types of In-Vehicle Networking (IVN) and industrial control responsibilities.