Reducing latency times by accelerated routing mechanisms for an FPGA gateway in the automotive domain

In todays and future automotive electric/electronic architectures the central gateway is one of the key components. The introduction of high performance bus systems like FlexRay and Ethernet, as well as new applications, creates additional requirements for gateway systems. The usage of reconfigurable hardware gives an interesting alternative to existing microcontroller based solutions. A modular gateway prototype based on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) with specialized routing modules allows a significant speed up compared to microcontroller solutions. The architecture of the routing hardware modules as well as the most relevant implementation details are described in this paper. The complete routing functionality was implemented and tested under series constraints. A performance comparison shows significant speedups. Our toolflow for routing table generation is presented in addition. A final version of the gateway has been successfully integrated into a modern mid class vehicle.