CAN FD Controller IP Core Excels Through Third Plug Fest Testing

WOODCLIFF LAKE, NJ — June 16, 2016 — The CAN FD Controller core developed by Fraunhofer IPMS and available through semiconductor intellectual property provider CAST, Inc. successfully underwent its third Plug Fest testing experience, in Nuremberg, Germany June 2–3, 2016.

These Plug Fests are sponsored by the CAN in Automation (CIA) trade group to approximate real-world conditions that go well beyond typical lab testing procedures. Representatives from numerous firms all connect their standards-based devices and see how they perform, individually and with all the other devices. This month’s Plug Fest was the most rigorous yet, with twenty participating CAN FD suppliers, thirty-three device nodes, and very challenging network topologies and timing scenarios presented by automakers Daimler AG and Volkswagen AG. It also featured CAN FD running in an actual automobile for the first time, a modified Passat provided by Volkswagen.

Engineers from twenty companies collaborated to test their CAN FD devices at the latest CIA Plug Fest.

The most demanding so far, this Plug Fest featured CAN FD running in a special Volkswagen Passat.

Fraunhofer engineers evaluated the CAN FD controller core running on CAST’s CAN FD Reference Design, implemented on Altera's DEO Nano Development Kit board and using transceivers from multiple suppliers. After two days of rigorous testing, Dr. Ralf Hildebrandt of the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS) gave this succinct report:

“Protocol behavior of our node was excellent. No problems.”

This marks the third successful Plug Fest for the CAN-CTRL IP Core, making it, the company believes, one of the most production-ready CAN FD controller cores available.

This high-performance, fully-featured controller supports all versions of the CAN FD standard and is available as a register-transfer level (RTL) soft core for ASICs or optimized netlist for FPGAs. Moreover, the company believes it is the only CAN FD controller IP core to have been proven to work well with all popular physical CAN FD transceivers, including those from Denso Automotive, Infineon Technologies, NXP Semiconductors, and On Semiconductor.

The CAN-CTRL CAN 2.0 & CAN FD Bus Controller IP Core is available now.

Learn more about the companies at their websites:
• Fraunhofer IPMS (http://www.ipms.fraunhofer.de/en.html),
• CAST, Inc. (http://www.cast-inc.com).