Accelerated Assurance For Functional Safety

Today’s electronic systems face unprecedented challenges in ensuring functional safety. As autonomous vehicles navigate our streets, medical devices sustain lives, and industrial automation systems control critical processes, the need for robust safety processes and supporting automation has never been more crucial. The complexity of modern electronic systems, coupled with stringent safety standards and regulations, demands a more sophisticated and comprehensive approach to deliver safety assurance while minimizing cost and accelerating development lifecycles.

Fig. 1: Example of various safety activities required throughout the development lifecycle.

The latest Siemens EDA and Wilson Research survey highlights a concerning trend and suggests traditional methods often fall short in addressing the full spectrum of potential failures that could compromise system safety.

Fig. 2: Decline in first silicon success.

Engineers must contend with both systematic failures inherent in a design and random failures that can occur during operation. This dual challenge requires a holistic approach that combines comprehensive verification methodologies.

A comprehensive solution for modern safety challenges

Siemens has unveiled its Questa One functional safety solution, setting a new standard in the verification and validation of safety-critical electronic systems. It represents a significant advancement in functional safety processes and automation, offering a unified platform that addresses both systematic and random failures in electronic systems.

Fig. 3: Questa One FuSa solution integrated with Siemens safety solutions.

The Questa One functional safety solution integrates several critical components that work together to provide project teams a holistic approach:

1. Smart Verification for Systematic Failure Prevention: The platform introduces an innovative, AI-powered approach to eliminating systematic failures and incorporates embedded requirements traceability, ensuring that designs meet safety standards from the earliest stages of development. By leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, the solution intelligently identifies potential failure patterns, optimizes test scenarios, and accelerates the overall verification process.
2. Advanced Safety Analysis: A standout feature of Questa One is its comprehensive safety analysis capabilities. VIQ Compliance Advisor and Questa One Safety Analyzer serve as a powerful front-end for creating and managing safety work products, such as failure modes, effects, and diagnostic analysis (FMEDA). It provides deep insights into random hardware-failure data throughout the project lifecycle, empowering engineering teams to make informed decisions at every stage of development.

1. Integrated Fault Campaign: Questa One features sophisticated fault campaign capabilities, integrating specialized fault injection engines across simulation, formal, and emulation. Full back-annotation to FMEDA delivers a seamless workflow from fault classifications to safety metrics.

1. Comprehensive Testing and Verification: Questa One incorporates sophisticated fault injection engines and campaign optimization techniques, enabling thorough testing of safety mechanisms. The platform’s design for testability features facilitate comprehensive fault injection and analysis, ensuring that safety mechanisms function as intended.

Integration and workflow optimization

A significant advantage of Questa One is its integrated approach to safety processes and flow. The Questa One Verification IQ framework brings together data across front-end design and verification activities, providing managers, engineers, and safety teams a collaborative, web-based environment to execute safety tasks, view results, and deliver work products for compliance.

Fig. 4: Verification IQ framework with engine integrations.

Tool qualification

Every tool deployed within an ISO 26262 workflow must be evaluated for its ability to introduce product failures. Each solution within the Questa One functional safety solution goes through an extensive third-party audit. All supporting data, including the certificates and safety manuals, are provided to help accelerate the tool argumentation required as part of a safety case. Clearing the Fog of ISO 26262 Tool Qualification provides insights into the tool qualification challenges, misconceptions, and more.

Conclusion

As electronic systems continue to play increasingly critical roles in safety-sensitive applications, the importance of a comprehensive functional safety solution cannot be overstated. Siemens’ Questa One represents a significant advancement in this field, offering a unified solution that addresses the complex challenges of modern safety-critical system development. By combining advanced verification methodologies with sophisticated safety analysis capabilities, Questa One is positioned to become an essential tool for organizations developing the next generation of safe and reliable electronic systems.

Dive deep into the capabilities of the Questa One functional safety solution by reading the solution whitepaper Accelerated Assurance with Questa One Functional Safety at Verification Academy.