A Safety Verification Methodology For Automotive Semiconductors


By Alessandra Nardi (Synopsys), Teo Cupaiuolo (Synopsys), and Liu Min (SGS-TÜV Saar) Functional safety has been a long-standing requirement for many electronics applications, including implanted medical devices, space-borne systems, and nuclear power plants. The widespread use of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and the advent of self-driving vehicles have added automotive chips to... » read more

Metrology Sampling Plans Are Key For Device Analytics And Traceability


A mother steps on the brakes, bringing her car to a stop as she drops her kids off for dance lessons. At the time, she doesn't notice anything wrong, but when she takes her car in for its regular service appointment, the mechanic conducts a diagnostic check and discovers that the primary brake system on the car had failed because of a faulty braking controller without anyone realizing it. Fortu... » read more

Scalability: A Looming Problem In Safety Analysis


The boundless possibilities of automation in cars and other vehicles have captivated designers to the point that electronic content is now a stronger driver of differentiation than any other factor. It accounts for a substantial fraction of material cost in any of these vehicles. But this revolution in automotive technology comes with a caveat. In other applications, an electronics problem may ... » read more

Novel Methods To Enhance Data Quality in FMEA Documents In Semiconductor Manufacturing


New research paper from Graz University of Technology & others. Abstract "Digitalization of causal domain knowledge is crucial. Especially since the inclusion of causal domain knowledge in the data analysis processes helps to avoid biased results. To extract such knowledge, the Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) documents represent a valuable data source. Originally, FMEA documents were de... » read more

Making Vehicle Electronics Safe With ISO 26262 Compliance


There are many semiconductor applications with high demands on safety, including spaceborne systems, nuclear power plants, and embedded medical devices. But automotive electronics are probably foremost in most peoples’ minds when they think about safe operation under all conditions. The advent of fully autonomous vehicles is responsible for much of this attention. Like other safety-critical a... » read more

Building A Safety Verification Flow


Sal Alvarez, senior manager of application engineering at Synopsys, explains how safety verification differs from functional verification, what changes with failure mode effects analysis, and how to determine and verify the effectiveness of safety features. » read more

Prepare For Success With A Failure Mode And Effects Analysis And Control Plan


In order to proactively handle potential process or product errors before they occur in manufacturing or on a customer’s production line, many organizations implement a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Control Plan (CP). Used as a process tool by the US military as early as 1949, FMEAs and CPs have evolved and gained popularity in many industries ranging from automotive, to pharma... » read more

Connecting The Car


K. Charles Janac, chairman and CEO of ArterisIP, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss changes in automotive and how the connected car will affect chip design and a multitude of other markets. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What is the biggest change you're seeing in semiconductors? Janac: The really big change is that mobility is flattening out. The mark... » read more

Is Your Automotive Software Robust Enough for Hardware Faults?


In this whitepaper, we will apply virtual Fault Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) concepts on a specific case study, an Electrical Vehicle Powertrain (EVP) system. We will show how this EVP system is refined from a Software-in-the Loop (SIL) level to a virtual Hardware-in-the-Loop level (vHIL), using a Virtualizer Development Kit (VDK). Hardware faults are applied to the resulting system and its ... » read more