Functional safety for the world of autonomous and zonal

Madhusudan Rao, Functional Safety Product Lead, Automotive LoB, ARM, presented the keynote at the Verification Futures Conference 2023 on functional safety for the world of autonomous and zonal.

Megatrends, such as user experience, automation, and electrification in an automotive are now prevailing. Automotive is a high-growth segment. Consumer expectations are rising for new experiences, increased automation, and desire for more sustainable electrified vehicles. Supply chain is looking for new business models and relationships with users.

Some key trends in automotive systems include application consolidation, energy efficiency, high-performance compute, software-defined functionality, functional safety and security, and richer user experiences. Key capabilities are around software, security, safety, scalable compute, power efficiency, vision and graphics, ML, real-time, etc.

There is convergence of megatrends to the software-defined vehicle. Vehicle architectures are changing, and so is the supply chain. Software complexity is accelerating. We are now moving toward software-defined vehicle and a cloud-native approach.

Looking at the architectural trends, there are zonal trends, such as traditional, domain, and centralized architecture, respectively. There are domain and zonal controllers. Domain controller has a range of different functions and dedicated domains. It has domain-specific resources, and routing and combining of data. Zone controller is highly centralized, and has commonality in hardware and software. There are fewer nodes, high-performance in heterogeneous computing, and local I/O.

We are moving from ADAS to automation. Level 3 in 2019 had conditional automation. There will be an increase in the number of sensors, more complex algorithms, system consolidation (domains and zones), growing amount of ASIL B/D software, etc. Level 4 from 2025 onward will have high automation. Level 5 from 2035 onward will have full automation.

There are challenges to autonomous deployment. Development of production-ready AV systems is “not going to be a light switch. It’s going to be a slow continuum of further capabilities.”

There are key technology drivers in the cockpit. New user experience-driven use cases, are often blurring the line between cockpit and ADAS, bringing safety and security requirements to both domains. This includes digital cluster, heads-up display (HUD), mirror replacement, driver/cabin monitoring, surround view / park assist, intelligent voice assistant, driver assistance alerts, music and video streaming, AR, driver personalization, etc.

The digital cockpit has higher number of displays, more complex safety content, new ASIL B safe use cases, application consolidation, increased focus on security, and growing number of OS support.

Common safety platform

There is huge increase in complexities for automotive development with software-defined. So, how do we deliver a common safety platform? Systems must function correctly for functional safety. That includes systematic and diagnostic capabilities.

A head-start to safety spans the ARM portfolio. ARM has growing AE IP portfolio and safety ready components. The ARM partnership and FuSa supply chain is also there. Systematic fault avoidance leads to functional safety. Split-lock is split for performance, and locked for safety. It has safety lock-step for application processors.

New hybrid mode delivers more flexibility. There are improvements in safety for ASIL B (hybrid mode). Lock is transparent to software. It eases the migration of software from prototype to production. It can mix locked and split, and clusters on a single SoC with various cluster configurations. It offers a true mixed criticality solution on the same system.

ARM has been verifying and validating for safety beyond boundaries. It has commitment to functional safety.