Functional Safety and Engineering Design Automation

Safety-critical applications have long been a significant and formidable challenge for product development and deployment. This challenge is increasing as more complex technologies are introduced. Sophisticated technologies like Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Autonomous Driving (AD) are pacing the capabilities of automated design and development tools. The tremendous effort involved in meeting functional safety standards like ISO 26262 exceeds most staffing levels. Attempting to address this with largely manual effort appears to be virtually impractical. Automating functional safety in product design, development and production processes is essential. For this to be possible, Engineering Design Automation tools must be able to support functional safety compliant design activities. EDA tools suppliers are stepping up to this challenge. EDA tools targeted for functional safety design and compliance verification are gradually coming into the market. It is not clear that these tools can meet the total needs of product design and development. This paper will provide a high-level, general perspective regarding this question.Functional safety standards have broad scope across many industries. The reader is encouraged to explore any industries where functional safety standards are in place. The scope of this paper is limited to automotive applications and, as stated above, the role EDA tools for the design of automotive electronics must fill to meet the challenges functional safety requirements place upon automotive electronics product development processes.