A word from the CiA Managing Director

The CAN XL specifications have made some significant progress. Many technical decisions have been taken in the last few months: The switching between the arbitration phase and the data phase and vice versa has been improved and the new MICI (medium-independent CAN interface) is now specified. The MICI enables bit-rates of 10 Mbit/s and perhaps more depending on the topology and the chosen physical layer components. Nevertheless, there are some details to be agreed on.

CiA members made also progress in the specification of CAN XL higher layers. The first SDU (service data unit) types (similar functionality as Ethertype) have been assigned and the corresponding next OSI layers have been specified. Another approach, the Virtual CAN identifier (VCID), provides similar functions as the VLAN in Ethernet-based solutions.

At the end, the network designer can mix the different OSI layers. This is the idea! You design your communication application independent of the lower OSI layers. In a second step, you chose the data link layer and physical layer depending on your quality-of-service requirements. With CAN XL, we have achieved this for the physical layer. You can select CAN high-speed transceivers compliant with ISO 11898-2:2016 or CAN SIC transceivers compliant with CiA 601-4 or CAN XL SIC transceivers as specified in CiA 610-3 (under development). This enables a real scalability regarding the physical layer performance.

In the future, CAN protocol controllers will support all three generations of CAN data link layer protocols: Classical CAN, CAN FD, and CAN XL. This data link layer scalability simplifies migration processes. The standardized higher-layer protocols, will even allow running TCP/IP on CAN XL. The benefit: You can use the robust and reliable CAN XL lower layers – not mentioning the low hardware costs.

The CiA organization will prove the interoperability of lower-layer implementations by means of plugfests. They will be organized in the beginning of 2021 as soon as the first engineering samples of CAN XL controllers are available.

 

CiA and virtual exhibitions

The CiA Business Committee (BC) has decided to not take part at the SPS Connect virtual fair. The BC members were not convinced by this approach: not suitable for CiA demands. The Embedded World 2021 exhibition has been cancelled, too. The decision, if CiA participates in the virtual alternative, has not been taken yet. The Innotrans exhibition, originally scheduled for 2020 and postponed, will even not take place in 2021. Next date is 2022. So, CiA’s next exhibition is the Interlift in Augsburg (Germany) in October 2021.

In the meantime, CiA tries to keep contact with the CAN community by means of this CAN Info Mail and its accounts on different social media channels:

CAN Newsletter Online

CAN Newsletter magazine

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