The PCM-CM100-D, an open platform for CAN applications, is announced. This product follows the PCI-104 specifications and the “Plug & play” design, and is suited to be installed in the PCI-104 bus of an embedded system. The PCM-CM100-D represents a very powerful and economic solution with one CAN channels, covering a wide range of CAN applications. The 16-bit on-board CPU allows many features, the filtering, preprocessing, and storage (with timestamp) of CAN messages as well as the real-time transmission of CAN messages. Under the effect of the high performance CPU, this card can be made for the CAN controller without losing data, even in systems with a high bus load. In addition, users can easily develop the user-defined firmware depending on the requirements of the CAN applications by using the PCM-CM100-D firmware library. Through the utility tool, after downloading the user-defined firmware into the PCM-CM100 instead of the default firmware, the data exchange between the PC program and the user-defined firmware is effectively performed via the DPRAM of the PCM-CM100-D. By means of the integration of the PC program and the user-defined firmware, the PCM-CM100-D makes it possible to preprocess CAN data streams, thus relieving the PC of a considerable burden and fitting the real-time requirements on the PC applications. Compared with the general non-intelligent CAN communication cards, this software architecture of the PCM-CM100-D provides great advantages on the applications run the HMI programs on the PC. These two kinds of software architectures are shown as below.