Hi and welcome to another in the Arm “What Is” program series. In each episode, we
dive into a tech topic to give you insight and perspective into some of today’s hottest
design trends. I’m Brian Fuller, editor-in-chief at Arm and today we’re going to find out
what is functional safety?
And to help us with that, I want to introduce Suraj Gajendra, Senior Director of Technology
Strategy with Arm’s Automotive and IoT Line of Business. When he’s not helping us understand
what is functional safety, Suraj is watching/reading/playing cricket!
Let’s dive right in!
Suraj, we hear a lot these days about functional safety. Just what is it?
Thanks, Brian. Functional safety is a technology that defines the level of safety standards
that our products actually have to meet. For applications like automotive and industrial
robotics, the products that get built using our IPs need to meet certain safety requirements
and regulations. For example, if the system using Arm in an industrial setup has to perform
or has to basically, in a faulty situation, needs to come to a halt or safe mode or whatever,
then it needs to basically need to be able to do that. Safety regulations help define
how the system is taken into a safe mode at that level.
That sounds like a complex undertaking. Does functional safety slow down the design process
or is that a non-issue?
Up until now, some of the semiconductor companies have been using their existing chips and existing
systems and trying to make it work in an automotive or industrial setup. When you try to do that
after the fact, after the design is done, then yes, it is difficult to retrofit some
of the safety standards and safety requirements into the design. Then you have to go back
and redo some of these steps. But if you plan for it ahead, if you think that these are
my requirements, these are the markets that I’m going to address or target, then some
of the safety requirements will fit in within the product definition of architecture. If
it doesn’t necessarily delay the process, but it does add more complexity. I’m not
saying it does not, it does add complexity, but if planned at the right time at the very
beginning and developed at the right time with all the concepts and requirements in
place then it should not delay the overall process.
Suraj, does functional safety extend to other applications outside of automotive world?
It absolutely does, yes. I mean, for example, industrial automation, industrial robotics.
These are all different applications where for example same concept: If an industrial
setup and if there is a robotic arm picking up materials coming down a conveyor belt and
if for some reason, it malfunctions then it has to go into some sort of safe mode. It
has to either come to a halt or switch off or whatever. Functional safety is absolutely
applicable to industrial space as well and the standards for that is different, the definition.
Because what happens is in an industrial setup, the time to react is really less than automotive.
Like we’re talking about microseconds in an industrial automation cycle whereas it’s
milliseconds in an automotive setup. The time to react to stop a robotic arm is much less
than an automotive setup.
Now put on your visionary hat for a second. How do you see functional safety technology
evolving in the next say two to three years? And what new use cases might benefit from
it?
Now the thing is like I told you earlier, Brian, people are taking safety very seriously,
people are defining their next- generation SoCs with understanding what the safety requirements
are. And yes, there are different levels of safety. In industrial for example, there are
standards like ASIL one, two, three whereas in automotive it is ASIL, beta, ASIL C, ASIL
delta different levels. And designing your chips for each of those different levels can
come with penalty in area, penalty in power, stuff like that. But people are thinking about
up front right now. My thinking is over the next say three, four, or five years, there
is going to be more and more chips that will be safety aware. I’m not saying all of them
will actually hit ASIL delta or the highest level of safety, but that depends on what
applications that they are targeting. But they will be built with some sort of safety
so that it becomes much easier for the system integrators to use those and build the equipment.
Well thanks Suraj! In just a few minutes you’ve educated us on this really fascinating topic
of functional safety. Check out all our other “What Is” episodes here and be sure to
subscribe to this channel because we’ll be adding more as the year progresses. Thanks
for listening!