Functional Safety

Arm has pre-integrated intellectual property for designers of AI-defined vehicle ICs. “Capabilities like real-time driver monitoring, predictive maintenance and adaptive in-vehicle infotainment, that were once limited to premium models, are becoming the standard across all tiers of new vehicles,” according to the company. “At the same time, automotive development complexity continues to grow, with evolving safety requirements and increasing demands ...

Texas Instruments has introduced two series of real-time microcontrollers in the run-up to Electronica today. F29H85x series is built on the company’s 64bit C29 DSP core and has an architecture designed with safety and security in mind. “Featuring diagnostics and error-checking mechanisms, the F29H85x series was engineered for compliance with ISO  26262 and IEC 61508 automotive and industrial safety standards, ...

Infineon has had its forthcoming TC4x automotive microcontrollers cleared for safe AI processing by the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems (IKS). “Embedded AI is becoming increasingly important for safety-critical real-time applications,” said Infineon. “However, this also creates new requirements and standards that must be considered during the complete product lifecycle.” The TC4x family includes ‘PPU’ (parallel processing unit), an AI-accelerator ...

TÜV Rheinland has accredited LG Electronics’ South Korean software centre for the evaluation of the functional safety of home appliance software. “LG is the first company to have its dedicated software testing facility receive this particular accreditation from TÜV Rheinland,” according to LG. It can now evaluate the architecture of software for its home appliances in accordance with IEC 60730-1 ...

For vehicle functional-safety applications, STMicroelectronics has combined hot-swap, soft-start and ideal-diode OR-ing in an IC intended to work with a pair of external n-channel mosfets over 4 to 65V. Called STPM801, “the ideal-diode controller drives an external mosfet replacing a Schottky diode conventionally used for reverse-input protection and output-voltage hold-up”, said ST. “When a reverse-voltage event occurs, in case of ...

Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS has had a version of its 32bit AIRisc RISC-V microcontroller intellectual property certified by by TÜV SGS to the ISO 26262 ASIL-D automotive safety standard. Called AIRisc-Safety, it can now be licensed from the organisation, which also offers customised versions for asic and FPGA integration. “Certification means that industrial customers directly receive a ...

Microchip has created IEC 61508 Safety Integrity Level 3 functional safety certification packages for two of its FPGA containing IC ranges: SmartFusion 2 and Igloo 2. “Systems used in many high-reliability commercial aviation, space, defence, automotive and industrial applications require certification to the IEC 61508 SIL 3 functional safety specification,” according to the company. Package deliverables include certification of Microchip’s ...

Microchip is aiming to meet ISO 26262 functional safety and new ISO/SAE 21434 cybersecurity standards with a family of Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontrollers with memory-built-in self-test, secure boot and support for Autosar – the latter an open software architecture that allows lower-level hardware to be changed without changing the original application code. “When using Autosar, Microchip offers ASIL B microcontroller abstraction ...

Renesas has revealed MCUs with dual 800MHz Arm Cortex-R52 cores and Ethernet for motor control in ac servo drives, inverters and industrial robots. “RZ/T2M is capable of controlling the servo motors that drive robots at extremely high speed and with high precision,” said company industrial automation v-p Toshihide Tsuboi. “I anticipate that it will contribute to the development and widespread adoption ...

STMicroelectronics has announced a microcontroller for electric vehicle on-board chargers, particularly those using silicon carbide power components. “Typical automotive MCUs in the market today cannot execute the charging-control algorithms at a rate that can support the higher SiC switching frequencies,” claimed ST. “Instead, additional DSP chips are needed specifically to handle the control loop.” The new parts are “automotive-qualified MCUs ...