FPGA microBlaze softcore In Field Update for Embedded IC Engine Control Unit (ECU)

FPGA microBlaze softcore  In Field Update

Control of the internal combustion engine in a motor vehicle presents a challenging embedded application.  A great solution is an FPGA, microBlaze softcore, In Field Update system.

The ELMG Digital Power embedded system for the vehicle engine control unit (ECU) meets this challenge by using a Xilinx FPGA to provides multiple custom peripherals to control fuel injectors and eThrottles.

The FPGA system provides

• Ethernet connection for the ECU to monitoring software.
• Custom peripherlas
• Field update of the software via the internet.

The FPGA has inside it a microBlaze soft core processor  from Xilinx.  This soft core processor runs C Code to perform the tasks best done with software.

The microBlaze

• runs a TCP/IP stack the that provides the interface to the Ethernet,
• manages the data logging to DDR memory,
• connects to the peripherals via the Xilinx Axi bus and
• communicates with the other processor in the system via a serial communications channel.

The Xilinx FPGA fabric implements the custom peripherals, the DDR interface and the softcore.