(iTers News) - Spansion Inc. started shipping samples of its Spansion Traveo automotive microcontroller S6J3100 series incorporating the high-performance CAN FD interface for enhanced in-vehicle networking. The new offering in the product family is focused on various automotive applications including body control module (BCM), heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC).

Bosch invented the CAN standard many years ago and since then worked to improve in-vehicle communication through innovative solutions. Bosch introduced CAN FD as a seamless upgrade of the classic CAN technology the first time at the International CAN Conference in 2012. Like classic CAN, CAN FD enables highly reliable vehicle control, taking advantage of higher data rates with only a small impact on current software and applications. Spansion has started to supply leadership MCU products equipped with CAN FD.

"This announcement underscores our commitment to technology leadership in our Spansion Traveo family of automotive microcontrollers," said Nobuhiko Akasaka, vice president of Spansion's Automotive MCU Business Unit. "The delivery of the CAN FD interface in our MCUs provides industry-leading performance. This latest edition of the Traveo family builds upon our momentum in automotive microcontrollers and addresses customer requirements for faster, secure and energy-efficient solutions."

In addition to the CAN FD interface operating at 5Mbps, 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.

The Spansion Traveo family of microcontrollers is based on the ARM Cortex-R5 core and tailored for a broad range of automotive applications. In May 2014, Spansion introduced the first product of the family, the MB9D560 series for vehicle electrification utilized in hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) and electrical vehicles (EV).