Complex electronic systems are at the heart of automobiles today. Dozens if electronic controllers provide functionality, reliability, safety and control systems like driver assistance, ABS, or EPS. ISO 26262 was established in 2011 to increase the safety of such electronic components in motor vehicles. The standard further specified the existing EN 61508 for the development of electronic systems by providing application-specific conditions for the automotive sector. ASICs, FPGAs and SoCs for applications in the automotive sector must now be provided with mechanisms that prevent or control hardware failures. Potential failure types must be listed and evidence that the requirements of one of the four defined levels (ASIL A-D) have been met.
Fraunhofer IPMS has now certified the specially developed CAN controller IP cores (CAN FD and CAN 2.0b) according to the ISO 26262:2018 requirements for the ASIL B level. Developed to network a larger number of control units found in automobiles, the CAN bus is a serial bus system now commonly used in automotive applications. Fraunhofer Group Leader for IP Cores and ASICs, Marcus Pietzsch explains, “System engineers can now use the IP core with certainty, knowing that it can be implemented in safety applications that are compliant with ASIL A and ASIL B systems. Fraunhofer IPMS is the first to develop a CAN 2.0b or CAN FD IP design certified according to this standard.”
According to Marcus Pietzsch, the design was one of the first CAN IP cores on the market has already been integrated into numerous ASIC and FPGA designs. More than 100 customers have successfully used the IP design. The design is delivered with VHDL or Verilog source code or as a netlist. Fully-synchronous descriptions and modern clock-domain-crossing can be flexibly implemented into individual control devices or switching circuits (System-on-Chip, FPGA) through its 32-bit controller interface (8 Bit and 16 Bit, as well as AMBA APB and AHB options).
Fraunhofer IPMS experts will be providing information of various automotive IP cores at the GLOBALFOUNDRIES Technology Conference to be held in Munich on 11. October 2019. In addition to CAN cores, automotive IP cores such as TSN (Time Sensitive Networking, formerly known as AVB) and LIN will be presented.
Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems