IP COREspondence May 2020

CAST COREspondence - UDP/IP, ISO 26262, TSN, SFLASH

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CAST COREspondence
The IP Newsletter from CAST, Inc. — May 29, 2020

I hope that you, your families, and your organizations are faring well in these Coronavirus times. We at CAST are all thankfully fine. Working remotely across the globe for decades means quarantines and social distancing haven’t significantly impacted our productivity.

In fact, we’ve been inspired to improve our products and services even further, since better and easier IP can only help those of you who must still get products developed and shipped on time.

New CAST website: CAN=CTRP IP Core product page

In this vein, we recently redesigned our website, with an improved organization and features we believe will help you zero in on the product details you seek. We’re also continually adding and improving our IP offerings: read below about a new 100Gbps UDP/IP Stack, better automotive and industrial interface IP, and one of the best serial flash controllers available.

Again, I hope you are doing well, and don't hesitate to contact me if CAST can help ease your product development challenges in any way.
-- Nikos, Zervas, CEO, [email protected]

New UDPIP-100G Controller Core

The UDP/IP stack cores we’ve offered since 2011 have proven popular for customers needing fast, lean networking for applications where TCP/IP’s error resiliency aren't required, such as live video broadcasting or Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN).

We’ve just started shipping a faster, fully-featured UDP/IP stack core. It offloads the demanding task of UDP/IP encapsulation and decapsulation from the system processor while transmitting and receiving data at speeds up to 100Gbps. Read more in our press release: CAST Releases 100Gbps UDP/IP Core.

Safety-Ready ISO 26262 IP Cores

The ISO 26262 standard provides for certifying that automotive components and systems are “safety ready.” Its levels of safety certification range from ASIL-A for minor hazards to ANSIL-D for life-critical functions such as air bag deployment.

We’re proud to have recently announced that:

The LLEMAC core is now ASIL-D ready (see the press release: Low-Latency Ethernet MAC IP Core from CAST now ASIL-D Certified), and
The extremely popular and well-proven CAN-FD core is now ASIL-B ready and can be ASIL-C ready upon request (CAST CAN 2.0/FD Bus IP is Safety-Ready with ISO 26262 Certification).

We are also working fast to achieve ISO 26262 certification for the Time Sensitive Ethernet (TSN) and possibly other cores we offer, so if safety certification is an issue for you, contact Sales for our roadmap.

A Focus on Time Sensitive Networking (TSN)

Our leadership and product line for Ethernet with Time-Sensitive Networking continues to grow as TSN increasingly takes its place as a key technology for complex automotive and industrial systems.

Recent TSN additions include:

A TSN-SE Switched Endpoint Controller core enabling small, low-power, low-latency TSN Ethernet nodes for daisy-chained or ring networks,
Frame Preemption (per IEEE 802.1Qbu and IEEE 802.1Qbr) for the TSN-SE and the TSN-EP Endpoint Controller,
Hardware Abstraction Level (HAL) for our TSN Linux drivers, and
TSN reference designs available for evaluation or rapid development on platforms from both Intel (Novtech Netleap) and Xilinx (MYD-Y7Z020).

We will continue to work with partner Fraunhofer IPMS to develop and deliver TSN IP, ensuring that our offerings are among the easiest to use and lowest risk through rigorous verification, active participation in LNI and IIC testbed plugfests, and numerous successful customer experiences.

Product Highlight: SFLASH Controller

Serial Flash Memory functionality is an essential component of many systems today, and its growth is expected to continue for several years. We offer one of the most fully-featured, lowest-risk SFLASH controllers available, the SFLASH-AHB Universal Serial Flash Controller.

This versatile N CAST's SFLASH-CTRL IP core supports many memory devices

CAST's SFLASH-CTRL IP core supports many memory devices

OR and NAND memory controller core enables a system to detect and access an attached Flash device, or to boot from it.

The core is easy to integrate—with standard AMBA® AHB interfaces and single- and dual-transfer rate, single through octal SPI lanes—and highly programmable. It offers integrated support for Slave, DMA, Boot-Image Copy, and eXecute In-Place (XIP) Flash modes, and supports the SPI protocols used by all major Flash device vendors (e.g., the xSPI, Xccela, and Hyperbus standards).

The SFLASH-AHB controller core is privately licensed and offered by multiple Flash device providers, and has been proven through commercial use by multiple customers. They have especially valued its:

rich feature set,
very small size (“half the size of any competitor” we have been told), and
straightforward implementation and timing closure.

Part of our Peripheral Controllers Family, the SFLASH Controller builds on our experience with SPI in our Serial Interface Controllers and other cores throughout our product line, and is ready for your use today.

Events & Background

Upcoming Events

Most conferences CAST might participate in have been cancelled due to the virus. DAC in July will be virtual, and we may try their online exhibit floor.