Automotive Gateway Controllers with FPGAs
An automotive gateway controller acts as a router between the different electrical/optical buses in a car and is intended to support various interfaces so the system can communicate with buses used by different manufacturers.Typically, the gateway controller integrates several multimedia interfaces, such as USB, FireWire, and media-oriented system transport (MOST) buses, as well as connecting the control area network (CAN) systems. The controller can also interface with new or after-market automotive modules using computer-related interfaces such as Ethernet and Bluetooth. In some applications, a gateway controller is used to control media devices such as flash memory and CD-ROM drives. A small CPU is often necessary to control the routing function of the gateway.
Figure 1 shows a typical automotive gateway controller system. Altera's low-cost Cyclone® series FPGAs are used for the next generation of embedded gateway controllers. Altera® FPGAs offer fully-flexible, real system-on-chip (SOC) solutions with a configurable number of ports and types along with hardware routing acceleration. Additionally, the Nios® II 32-bit RISC embedded processor architecture allows for easy integration of network services protocols.
All the types of interfaces shown in Figure 1 are available as intellectual property (IP) cores from Altera or Altera partners. Using Altera’s SOPC Builder, you can implement a Nios II processor along with all types of IP on a flexible bus system within a few minutes.
Figure 1. Automotive Gateway Controller
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