| The idea of Controller Area Network (CAN) was hatched by engineers at the Robert Bosch GmbH in Germany in the early 1980s. They investigated the market for a suitable field-bus technology for use in automobiles that would enable them to add further functionality. Main focus was a communication system between a number of ECUs (electronic control units) in vehicles by Mercedes-Benz. Any field-bus system that is based on serial communication will reduce wiring, which was originally considered only as an advantageous side effect. Distributed control, i.e. the use of a multi-processor system, will consequently result in increased performance and the vastly reduced costs of industrial microcontroller chips in the market made the use of multiple processors in one system affordable. Other advantages are increased reliability and improved service and maintenance features. However, none of the existing communication protocols did meet the specific requirements, for instance, for communication speed and data reliability; as a result they had to develop their own standard. The involvement of a vehicle manufacturer like Mercedes-Benz and Intel as a semiconductor manufacturer as well as several universities in Germany helped to make this a success story. The CAN standard was first introduced 1986 during the SAE congress in Detroit, Michigan. The first CAN controller chips, the Intel 82526 and the Philips 82C200, were introduced in 1987. Since then many other semiconductor manufacturers made their decision to produce stand-alone CAN controllers or implement them into their single-chip designs. |