CPU safety-critical systems

Louise Davis

Imagination Technologies announces a highly-scalable 64-bit MIPS multiprocessing solution that has been stringently assessed and validated to meet functional safety (FuSa) compliance for ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 standards.

This makes it suitable for handling the compute-intensive tasks in emerging safety-critical systems such as autonomous vehicles, industrial IoT and robotics.

Surpassing the capabilities of other FuSa CPU IP cores, the I6500-F provides a high-performance, highly efficient backbone for the many-core designs that drive these systems, scaling to 64 heterogeneous clusters of multi-threaded multi-core MIPS CPUs and other accelerators in a system.

FuSa is essential to all parts of a safety-critical system, and that includes the CPU IP at the heart of the SoC.

Applications such as autonomous vehicles and industrial control systems in smart factories require ever-increasing levels of processing that exceed the capabilities of today’s FuSa compliant CPU IP cores.

Customers can use the extended performance capability of the I6500-F to efficiently integrate increased intelligence – including AI techniques such as CNNs and DNNs – in their safety-critical devices.

The I6500-F is designed to meet requirements for ASIL B(D) level, allowing the I6500-F to target demanding automotive applications up to ASIL D.

The IP was developed as a Safety Element out of Context (SEooC) with a safety lifecycle based on a close collaboration with lead partners and together with a common independent safety assessor, ResilTech S.r.l.

The I6500-F design safety lifecycle aligns closely with the component vendor safety lifecycle, based on ISO 26262, 2011 1st Edition standard but already considering best practices for IP from Part 11 to be present in the 2nd Edition of ISO 26262 and already available in the published DIS version.

The I6500-F represents a new class of MIPS processors designed to ‘FortifAI’ next-generation intelligent systems – delivering extremely high system efficiency and scalable computing and raising the bar on functional safety.

Customers can be assured that MIPS FortifAI CPUs will provide the high performance and safety features needed for compute-intensive tasks across a wide range of smart safety-critical applications.