Applying IEC 61508 to Integrated Circuits

Today's deep integration of modern automotive systems is causing car suppliers and manufacturers to situate the burden of hardware integrity at the most basic level of safety control: the microcontroller. This requires, on the one hand, closer cooperation between IP Provider, SiP, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and car manufacturer; and on the other hand, an electronic design automation (EDA) innovation for safety integrity analysis of integrated circuits. This article proposes a methodology approved by Germany's Technical Testing and Inspection Organizations (TÜV SÜD) for approaching this problem, and presents the results of its application to different architectures built on the ARM 968ES core.