Spansion Supports Next-Generation CAN FD Protocol in Automotive and IoT

NUREMBERG, Germany, Feb. 24, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Spansion Inc., CODE a global leader in embedded systems, today presented its product lineup supporting the CAN FD protocol for automotive electronics and the industrial Internet of Things (IoT). The CAN FD (flexible data rate) standard is an improved and faster version of the CAN protocol, which is the current standard in harsh environments with wide temperature ranges, and varying environmental situations. As a member of the CAN in Automation e.V. (CiA), Spansion has been bringing their expertise and working in a task force to drive the ISO standardization of the CAN FD protocol. CAN FD allows a flexible data rate and larger packet size, making it ideal for industrial IoT and automotive applications such as body electronics, in-car networking and graphic clusters. Spansion has adopted the new protocol at a very early stage and is already offering a wide range of products supporting the new CAN FD protocol, among them the Traveo^™ family of automotive MCUs and the FM4 family of MCUs for industrial applications.

"A faster and more efficient CAN network will be necessary in the future since we are at the beginning of a new data explosion in both automotive electronics and the Internet of Things. This can make life difficult for design engineers, because having all components communicating effectively is more important than ever," says Wolfgang Wiewesiek, marketing manager of the automotive MCU business unit, Spansion. "This is why we have been working with CiA to bring CAN to the next level."

Currently, Spansion offers single, dual and quad CAN FD interfaces on both Traveo and FM4 MCUs. Future roadmaps include architectures for up to 8 channels per MCU. Also, with the completion of the ISO standardization, the products will migrate from non-ISO CAN FD to ISO CAN FD. Any future MCU implementation will provide legacy mode for non-ISO CAN FD. Also, Classical CAN is provided as a legacy protocol on any CAN FD MCU.

CAN FD in Automotive: The Spansion Traveo^™ Family

Already today, Spansion is offering the CAN FD protocol in a wide range of products for automotive applications:

• The Spansion® Traveo™ S6J3100 series incorporates the high-performance CAN FD interface for enhanced in-vehicle networking. The product family is focused on various automotive applications including body control module (BCM) and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC). In addition to the CAN FD interface, the S6J3110 series comes with a maximum 4MB of flash memory to enable high-level program control, and uses 55nm technology. It also features Secure Hardware Extension (SHE) for network security and improved performance for connected cars, as well as advanced partial wakeup for lowering power consumption.
• Spansion® Traveo™ Graphics MCU: is the first 3D-capable ARM^® Cortex^®-R5 cluster MCU aimed at rich human machine interface (HMI) in automotive dashboards. Next to CAN FD, Spansion has also integrated its proprietary HyperBus™ interface to provide customers design simplification and faster performance in automotive systems. It delivers state-of-the-art 2D and 3D graphics, which Spansion has optimized to bring sophisticated and automotive specific graphics functions into the car without increased power and BOM requirements. In addition to the strong graphics feature-set, the solution includes enhanced and next-generation connectivity, supporting a wide range of communications protocols, including CAN and CAN FD. Spansion is offering two variations: the S6J324C series enables 2D graphics while the S6J326C variant supports both 2D and 3D graphics.

CAN FD for the Industrial IoT: The Spansion FM4 family of MCUs

For the industrial IoT, Spansion has continually enhanced its

Spansion® FM4 family of flexible microcontrollers (MCUs). Spansion provides highly integrated, single-chip solutions for easy and cost-efficient design.

• The S6E2CC MCU series based on the ARM® Cortex®-M4F core is designed for enhanced human machine interfaces (HMIs) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. The rich set of peripherals and the large memory allow single-chip solutions for a wide variety of applications, including factory automation, industrial IoT, motor control, office automation, building management systems, smart meters, digital cameras and multi-function printers. The family supports more than a dozen different communications and memory interfaces, among them CAN and CAN FD – for automotive and industrial time-critical networks.
• The Spansion® FM4 S6E2DH series of MCUs is an industry-leading combination of the high-performance ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller, an integrated 2D rendering graphics display controller (GDC) with dedicated video RAM and a rich mix of communication and digital peripherals. This makes it a truly integrated embedded processor for integrating displays in industrial, consumer and home applications. The GDC enables rich graphics processing and offloads the microcontroller CPU for other application functions. Spansion's HyperBus™ interface is part of the graphics subsystem, allowing very fast image retrieval without blocking code execution. These features make the highly integrated S6E2DH ideal for smart consumer/home appliances, where the bill of material (BOM) cost is kept low while delivering the rich graphics experience that consumers expect.

Resources:
Spansion Traveo and FM4 Microcontroller family: http://www.spansion.com/Products/microcontrollers/32-bit-ARM-Core/Pages/Default.aspx

Photos: http://news.spansion.com/image_gallery
Spansion newsroom: http://news.spansion.com 
Spansion Core & Code technical magazine and blog: http://core.spansion.com
Spansion on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/spansion
Spansion on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/spansion   
Spansion on LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/company/spansion

About Spansion
Spansion CODE is a global leader in embedded systems solutions. Spansion's flash memory, microcontrollers, analog and mixed-signal products drive the development of faster, intelligent, secure and energy efficient electronics. Spansion is at the heart of electronics systems, connecting, controlling, storing and powering everything from automotive electronics and industrial systems to the highly interactive and immersive consumer devices that are enriching people's daily lives. For more information, visit http://www.spansion.com.

Spansion®, the Spansion logo, MirrorBit®, HyperBus, HyperFlash, Traveo and combinations thereof, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Spansion LLC in the United States and other countries. ARM and Cortex are registered trademarks of ARM Limited (or its subsidiaries) in the EU and/or elsewhere. Other names used are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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SOURCE Spansion Inc.