Functional safety verification is a must have for automotive applications. Or is it? First, let’s define what the term actually means. In most cases, the term refers to ISO standard 26262, which is an adaptation of the IEC standard 61508, representing the functional safety of automotive electrical systems. Have I lost you yet?

Once you dive down into the spec, if you can get into the nuts and bolts of it, it’s not that hard to comprehend. Complying with the standard is another issue, though. That’s why folks like Cadence have simplified the task by providing complete solutions, just the bits and pieces that designers need to piece together.

In fact, Cadence claims that it can reduce the design effort to comply with the standard by 50 percent. Their solution is actually an expansion to the company’s existing functional verification platform, adding fault-injection and safety-verification technologies help automotive engineers automate ISO 26262 compliance for traceability, safety verification, and tool confidence level (TCL).

The quoted 50 percent savings results from automating the typically manual verification process of fault injection and result analysis for IP, system-on-chip (SoC), and system designs. In addition, it includes a functional safety simulator and a functional safety analysis capability.

The Cadence safety solution should be available in the first half of next year.