With the increasing demand from consumers for safer, smarter, and highly connected cars, the automotive industry is undergoing rapid changes. Meanwhile, due to the rise of autonomous driving, electric vehicles, and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), the overall complexity of automotive systems has significantly increased. The industry must address these new safety challenges, ensuring the safety of end-users while providing a high-quality driving experience.

What is functional safety?

Functional safety is crucial for ensuring that systems can operate correctly in response to inputs, especially in the automotive and industrial IoT fields. It has played an important role in reducing residual risks by adopting strict processes and standards. This mechanism ensures that the system can operate safely under various conditions, including preventing unacceptable risks caused by electronic and electrical (E/E) system failures in the vehicle.

The goal of functional safety is to ensure that vehicles can correctly process input information, thereby preventing malfunctions and ensuring passenger safety. To achieve this goal, the following key principles must be followed in order to build functionally safe products in the automotive industry.

The primary consideration for automotive functional safety

Building the Correct Security Design

When building safety designs for products, strict safety requirements and objectives must be met to reduce potential hazards. Key design considerations include implementation redundancy, diversity, execution of software test libraries (STL), and safety state design to ensure system reliability. Arm's latest automotive enhancement (AE) product portfolio provides scalable customized solutions to meet specific safety requirements.

Compliant with standards

Products based on target solutions must comply with relevant regulations and safety standards. For example, ADAS solutions should comply with UN ECE GSR as well as standards such as ISO 26262, ISO 21448 (SOTIF), and ISO 21434 to ensure the correlation between functional safety and information security.

From the perspective of Arm AE products, compliance with ISO 26262 standards is crucial for automotive lifecycle safety and serves as the cornerstone supporting partner solutions. Arm's security ready solutions are designed using a "security first" approach, combining advanced security mechanisms and comprehensive security packages to help partners meet the ISO 26262 standard.

risk management 

In order to build a functional safety system, risk analysis must be conducted at the vehicle level to perform Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment (HARA) and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). These system analysis tools help develop robust systems and components, some of which are particularly critical for Arm AE processors, including the Arm Cortex-A and Cortex-R series processors.

Verification and Confirmation

Strict testing is crucial, including hardware in the loop (HIL) and software in the loop (SIL) simulations. To achieve this goal, Arm and its partners actively build virtual platforms to advance software development, shorten development cycles, and ensure scalable redeployment across various vehicle models.

Supplier Management

Efficient communication between vehicle manufacturers and first tier suppliers is crucial. The Arm ecosystem encompasses collaborations with automotive industry leaders to ensure smooth access to necessary tools, resources, and expertise for efficient supplier management.

Life cycle management

Promoting a safety culture and implementing continuous improvement processes are essential for maintaining high safety standards. The Arm Flexible Access solution enables vehicle manufacturers and first tier suppliers to evaluate different IP computing platforms in an economically efficient manner, enabling them to make more informed choices about system on chip (SoC) offerings from suppliers.

Document recording and traceability

Maintaining detailed documentation and ensuring traceability of security requirements is crucial. Through Arm's partner program, Arm provides comprehensive support and helps achieve functional safety compliance through industry-leading security solutions to support the Arm AE product portfolio.

Choose the right technology for appropriate use cases

Functional safety requirements vary depending on the use case. The auto drive system is required to reach ASIL D integrity level, while the systems with lower importance may only need to reach ASIL B level. Arm Reference Design RD-1 AE is designed for the automotive industry, providing high-performance Arm Neoverse V3AE CPU and Cortex-R82AE based safety island for additional safety monitoring. The Cortex-R82AE processor meets ASIL D requirements and has high reliability.

Choosing the appropriate technology is extremely necessary. Arm provides customized computing solutions for different security needs. The Cortex-R processor is designed specifically for safety islands and real-time automotive applications, while the Cortex-A processor can handle complex computing tasks, such as utilizing split core, locked step, and hybrid mode autonomous driving functions.

The important role of software

Software is crucial for optimizing functional safety in the automotive industry and ensuring an excellent driving experience. Arm STL provides comprehensive testing and validation tools to enhance the safety of automotive applications. These libraries can help developers ensure that their software meets the strict safety standards of the automotive industry.

Arm's Functional Safe Runtime System (FuSa RTS) is a certified software component that reduces the time and effort required to achieve final safety certification in various embedded applications. The system includes a robust real-time operating system (RTOS), an independent processor abstraction layer, and a C language code library highly optimized and validated by Arm architecture experts for Cortex-M processors. It has been optimized for the native use of functional safety compilers and Arm's embedded toolchain Arm Keil MDK.

In addition, Arm relies on a vast ecosystem of partners, including members of SOAFEE, to build functional safety and automotive safety software applications. SOAFEE (Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge) is a program led by Arm that combines the automotive industry with the software industry, aiming to make artificial intelligence (AI) software defined cars a reality. SOAFEE has created a new software solution ecosystem that supports chip development and deployment processes by achieving software consistency, which is crucial for the Arm Automotive Computing Subsystem (CSS) to be launched in 2025.

Arm platform is the cornerstone of future automotive safety

With the continuous innovation in the automotive industry, the importance of functional safety will only continue to increase. The new Arm AE processor is based on the Armv9 architecture, bringing server level performance and advanced security features to automotive applications, ensuring that future cars can meet the growing demand for automation and networking. The Arm AE processor is flexible and efficient, capable of increasing the efficiency of safety critical computing tasks by up to 30%, laying a solid foundation for future automotive innovation.

For over 30 years, Arm has been a trusted leader in the field of secure computing in the automotive industry. The Arm AE product portfolio provides Arm's partners with a rich set of options to meet their needs, whether the positioning of different processing units in the solution reaches ASIL B level or has complete ASIL D functionality. In addition, with a perfect ecosystem, Arm is building a full stack software solution that runs on the latest Arm AE products, covering many automotive applications, including regional control, in vehicle infotainment (IVI), ADAS and auto drive system (ADS). Combined with Arm's supporting software (including STL and SystemReady), a wide range of functional safety features can be achieved, and performance, power consumption, and area (PPA) can be optimized for the safety functions required by automotive computing systems. With a powerful combination of software and hardware innovation, the Arm platform will safeguard current and future automotive safety.