Functional Safety is very important for the physical integrities of car passengers and drivers. It primarily offers answers for technical failures during operation. Hidden inside the car, no one really takes notice of such a technical failure until a little lamp indicates something is not working properly.

Essentially, we think of events that could harm the driver or passengers, sort them by severity, and try to figure out ways to prevent them from happening. These prevention methods are based on a comprehensive analysis of what could happen and how that would impact the driver’s and passengers’ healths. Informed by the results of the risk assessment, an overall hard- and software concept can be calculated.

As Preferred Design House of Infineon Technology AG, we are very proud to implement Functional Safety into Aurix microcontrollers, which are by design able to cope with all aspects of ISO26262. Supplemented by dedicated tools (e.g., VX Toolset from TASKING or SafeTLib from HiTex), effort can be significantly reduced. Unfortunately, just having the tools does not substitute a comprehensive knowledge of the rules of ISO26262. Hence, to bridge this gap, we offer consulting but also implementation services.

A short example may give you a little insight into what this is about.

In the world of Functional Safety, the V Model is heavily relied upon to organize all its aspects (e.g., Functional Safety Management, Concept Phase, Software and Hardware Development, and Production and Operation). Additional Supporting processes as well as ASIL- and Safety oriented Analysis tools complete the V Model. To show overall compliance with ISO26262 Part 2 standards, all those aspects need to be addressed very well before the product can be distributed to the customer.

If we suppose the Concept Phase is finished—all analysis and risk assessments as well as the Functional Safety Concept are done—, the Product Development at System Level will begin. Here we address the Specification of technical safety requirements and begin System Design. From there we dive into Software and Hardware Development at Software- and Hardware-Level, sometimes sequentially and sometimes in parallel. During this process, several control and testing loops prompt readjustments to finally meet given requirements. The additional interface between Hardware and Software clearly describes how these elements should interact with each other. After developing Software and Hardware, the path goes all the way up to Item integration and testing at system level, Safety validation, and Functional safety assessment. If all this works fine, the product is ready to be released and further produced.

That sounds so easy, but it actually requires a lot of effort to achieve!

For more information, please contact [email protected].