Comparison of Classical CAN, CAN FD, and CAN XL and CAN XL

Last updated at 2025-07-19Posted at 2025-07-19

Comparison of Classical CAN, CAN FD, and CAN XL and CAN XL and Ethernet 10BASE-T1S
https://www.bosch-semiconductors.com/media/ip_modules/pdf_2/can_xl_1/20220825_can_xl_vs_10base-t1s_v2.pdf

Comparison of CAN Protocols (Layer 2)

Property	Classical CAN	CAN FD	CAN XL
Data Field	[0 ... 8 byte]	[0 ... 64 byte]	[1 ... 2048 byte]
Identifier	11 bit & 29 bit	11 bit & 29 bit	11 bit
Bus Access	CSMA/CR (Arbitration)	CSMA/CR (Arbitration)	CSMA/CR (Arbitration)
Acceptance Field	–	–	32 bit (Message ID)
VCAN ID	–	–	8 bit
SDU Type	–	–	8 bit
Bit Stuffing	dynamic	dynamic	dynamic (in arbitration field)fixed (in data phase)
		fixed in CRC
CRC	15 bit	17 or 21 bit	PCRC: 13 bit
			FCRC: 32 bit (outperforms Flexray & Ethernet)
Error Signaling	ON	ON	Software Configurable: ON/OFF
Transceiver Mode Switching	Not supported	Not supported	Software Configurable: ON/OFF
Bit rate ratio: data/arb	–	Up to approx. 16.	Up to 40 (e.g. 500 kbit/s & 20 Mbit/s)
Arbitration phase bit rate	[0 ... 1 Mbit/s]	[0... 1 Mbit/s]	[0... 1 Mbit/s]
Data phase bit rate	–	[... 8 Mbit/s]	[2x ... 20 Mbit/s]

property

Data Field
Identifier
Bus Access
Acceptance Field
VCAN ID
SDU Type
Bit Stuffing
CRC
Error Signaling
Transceiver Mode Switching
Bit rate ratio: data/arb
Arbitration phase bit rate
Data phase bit rate

Specification

CAN Specification bosh
http://esd.cs.ucr.edu/webres/can20.pdf

CAN FD spacification bosh
https://web.archive.org/web/20151211125301/http://www.bosch-semiconductors.de/media/ubk_semiconductors/pdf_1/canliteratur/can_fd_spec.pdf

ISO 11898-1:2024 Road vehicles — Controller area network (CAN) Part 1: Data link layer and physical coding sublayer
https://www.iso.org/standard/86384.html

Terms and Definition

3.1 arbitration mode
operating mode of the physical coding sub-layer (PCS) in which it is allowed that dominant bits can overwrite recessive bits
3.2 arbitration phase
phase in which the nominal bit time (3.42) is used
3.4 bit stuffing
frame coding method providing bus state (3.8) changes required for periodic resynchronization when using a non-return-to-zero (NRZ) (3.43) bit representation
Note 1 to entry: Two types of bit stuffing exist: dynamic bit stuffing and fixed bit stuffing. The transmitter (3.54) adds stuff bits into the outgoing bit stream and receivers (3.48) de-stuff the data frames (3.16) and the remote frames (3.49) i.e. the inverse procedure is carried out.
3.5 bus
shared medium of any topology
3.15 data bit time
duration of one bit in data phase (3.17), defined by a number of data time quanta in the bit
3.16 data frame DF
frame (3.28) containing application content
3.17 data phase
phase in which the data bit time (3.15) is used
3.21 error frame EF
frame (3.28) indicating the detection of an error condition
3.28 frame
protocol data unit of the data link layer specifying the arrangement and meaning of bits or bit fields in the sequence of transfer across the transmission medium
3.31 identifier ID
unique label reflecting the priority (3.45) of a particular frame (3.28)
3.45 priority
attribute to a data frame (3.16) and to a remote frame (3.49) controlling its ranking during the arbitration
Note 1 to entry: A high priority increases the probability that a data frame or a remote frame wins the arbitration process. Further details are given in 6.6.17.5.
3.52 transceiver
electronic circuit, implementing the physical medium attachment (PMA) sub-layer, that connects controller area network (CAN) nodes (3.39) to a CAN bus (3.5) consisting of a bus comparator (3.6) and a bus driver (3.7)
3.53 transceiver mode
operating mode of the physical medium attachment (PMA) sub-layer

Bibliography

[1] ISO/IEC 8802-2, Information technology — Telecommunications and information exchange between systems — Local and metropolitan area networks — Specific requirements — Part 2: Logical link control
[2] ISO/IEC/IEEE 8802-3, Information technology — Telecommunications and exchange between information technology systems — Requirements for local and metropolitan area networks — Part 3: Standard for Ethernet
[3] ISO 11898-2:2024, Road vehicles — Controller area network (CAN) — Part 2: High-speed physical medium attachment (PMA) sublayer
[4] ISO 11992-1:2019, Road vehicles — Interchange of digital information on electrical connections between towing and towed vehicles — Part 1: Physical and data-link layers
[5] CiA 612-1, CAN XL guidelines and application notes – Part 1: System design recommendations
[6] CiA 612-2, CAN XL guidelines and application notes - Part 2: CAN XL PWM coding guideline
[7] CiA 604-3, CAN FD light – Part 3: System design recommendations