Fundamentals of Semiconductor ISO 26262 Certification: People, Process and Product

Written by Kurt Shuler, VP of Marketing at Arteris IP

Developers of automotive semiconductor devices and electronic systems beware: There may be some vendors who claim their products meet the ISO 26262 safety standard requirements for integration into the production of passenger vehicles without fully understanding the nature of the challenge. These claims might be superficial if they fail to account for the people and processes that are used to make a product intended for an automobile. If system designers fail to carefully assess a vendor’s qualifications, they risk difficulties getting their product accepted by customers in the automotive supply chain.

Participants in the automotive supply chain are responsible for performing their own functional safety assessments of each vendors’ offering, taking into account their suppliers’ documented Assumptions of Use (AoU) which describe how the vendor’s product is expected to be used in an automotive system. Vendors tailor their own analysis to specific configurations and use cases that will hopefully match those of their integrator customer. A third-party ISO 26262 certification for an element1 to be used in an automotive system can help the system integrator perform this analysis, but it does not replace the obligation of integrators to analyze their vendor’s product in the context of the integrator’s own use.

This paper explores the fundamentals of ISO 26262 certification for the people, processes and products involved in designing functionally-safe electronic systems for automobiles. The end goal is to make development teams, executives and investors more aware of the responsibilities involved in complying with the details of automotive safety standards. That, in turn, will provide more information on the efforts and costs associated with compliance and will also enable more efficient communications between supply chain members.

Read more here.