Bosch Motorsport is using Xilinx Zynq-7000 All Programmable devices

The performance and robustness of the Zynq SoC-based Bosch-ECU enabled the race team to take on the podium multiple times, honored with first place at every race of the season so far: 6 Hours of Silverstone race in April 2013, 6 Hours of Spa race in May 2013, and at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the premium event of the World Endurance Championship.

The HEL based ECU developed by Bosch is responsible for the complete Diesel engine management including multi-point injection and pressure control. Besides collecting engine data, the ECU also provides functions like the pit row speed limiter and traction control.

A Xilinx Zynq-7020 All Programmable SoC (System-on-a-Chip) which contains a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processing system acts as the brain of the ECU. Whereas most control algorithms are running sequentially on the ARM cores, the programmable logic part of the Zynq device is used for parallel acquisition of the engine data and interfacing to other subsystems via PWM, RS-232, LIN, CAN or Ethernet, real time critical signal-processing and IO-controls.

The versatile architecture of the Zynq devices allows us to react to change requests fast, says Markus Kirschner, Group Leader Hardware Development at Bosch Motorsport. Re-using certain IP blocks also shortened the development time dramatically, Kirschner adds. Bosch had already used an FPGA in the previous platform, but the combination with a discrete microcontroller could not meet the performance requirements for the new system. The new Zynq-based ECU provides lower power consumption, yet delivers more than twice the performance in a small footprint.

Bosch Motorsport is about to make further use of the flexibility and scalability of the Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC technology. This Zynq-based board will also be used as a processing platform for other applications. Plans exist to use it for gasoline engine controls in other race series cars, as a data logger or as an in-vehicle graphics display controller.

We are extremely pleased to be given the opportunity to show the high performance and low power capabilities of our Zynq devices in such a competitive environment. This not only shows the performance that Zynq-based systems can achieve but also the quality and reliability of these Zynq devices under these extreme endurance racing conditions. The tight integration of processor and FPGA fabric provides the ability to massively speed up critical tasks beyond the processing capability of software alone, thus enabling customers such as Bosch to build even smarter and more flexible systems, concludes Jack Dunnigan, senior director, Segment Marketing and Business Development at Xilinx.