IFI CAN-FD FPGA soft IP controller
A CAN-FD (Controller Area Network with Flexible Data-rate) controller sold by the German firm IFI (Franz Sprenger) as a soft IP core that customers synthesize into Intel/Altera FPGAs and similar programmable logic. It is used in specialized industrial and automotive engineering setups rather than as a discrete plug-in adapter.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche: this is not a mass-market chip but an FPGA soft-IP block that IFI still markets in 2025 (and Intel still lists IFI as a CAN/CAN-FD/CAN-XL IP partner), so real users do exist. Upstream maintenance is healthy — the file was still receiving treewide CAN housekeeping as recently as October 2025 — but deployment volume is low enough that flagging it as a specialized FPGA driver would help future maintainers understand who actually depends on it.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
The driver file was still being touched in 2025 by upstream CAN treewide work, so it is not abandoned.
- cateee.net
LKDDb identifies this as CONFIG_CAN_IFI_CANFD for the IFI CAN_FD IP, a platform/of-backed soft IP driver present through current kernel series.
- ifi-pld.de
Vendor product page still advertised the IFI CAN_FD IP recently, targeting current Intel/Altera FPGA families and describing CAN FD features.
- intel.com
Intel's partner listing describes IFI Franz Sprenger as currently providing CAN IP cores including CAN FD and CAN XL.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local source inspection via exec_command showed this is a real platform driver for an I/F/I soft CAN-FD IP block usually synthesized into FPGA/CPLD, not a legacy discrete adapter. lore_file_timeline on drivers/net/can/ifi_canfd/ifi_canfd.c showed steady upstream attention through 2025, with latest touches being CAN treewide maintenance rather than removal discussion; I used the linux-can lore URL from that result. Web search found LKDDb for kernel presence, the vendor CANFD page (search snippet crawled 5 months ago) showing ongoing product marketing, and Intel's current partner page listing IFI as offering CAN/CAN FD/CAN XL IP cores. This looks like a niche industrial/FPGA deployment with continued but low-volume relevance, so keep the driver but annotate it as specialized rather than deprecating or removing it.