Implementing FlexRay on Silicon

FlexRay^1, a high speed, time triggered and fault tolerant communication protocol, was specified to fulfil the requirements of safety-critical automotive applications. The maturity of the FlexRay specification already allows the implementation on silicon. The CZC-310^2 device is a FlexRay standalone communication controller from Infineon Technologies. It includes the widely spread E-Ray^3 from Bosch. A complete communication node for FlexRay requires additional devices for the physical layer and the application part. CZC-310 can communicate with a host controller via three different interfaces (micro link interface, serial synchronous interface, external bus). Its physical layer interface corresponds to the FlexRay specification. CZC-310 provides features like intelligent move engines to maximize the achievable data rate as well as to minimize the workload of the host. Therefore, CIC-310 allows a very flexible and efficient way to build up FlexRay nodes.