Renesas Electronics introduces innovative quantitative analysis tools to simplify certification to ISO 26262, the automotive functional safety standard

Renesas has introduced the CAR Tool, an innovative safety analysis tool (customizable analysis reports) that enables customers to quickly integrate Renesas products into safety-critical automotive systems while enhancing user confidence that the systems meet the latest safety standards. The powerful new FMEDA (Fault Mode Impact and Diagnostic Analysis) tool, optimized for the ISO 26262 standard, which addresses the safety of electrical and/or electronic systems in road vehicles, is revolutionary.

As part of the Automotive Functional Safety Support program, Renesas offers a wide range of semiconductor products, software, solutions and tools for virtually all automotive applications. The latest addition to the program, the CAR Tool addresses an all-too common market problem: how to align a common SEooC (Independent Safety Unit) functional safety analysis report with the final application-specific application scenario and the need for a single standard to support multiple safety goals.

Riccardo Vincelli, Director of Renesas Electronics' Functional Safety Technology Center, said: "This is a tool developed specifically for customer safety engineers by safety engineers who have been deeply involved in the development of ISO26262 from the very beginning. This tool is an effective solution to the challenges developers face when it comes to efficient security analysis, effective exchange of results between different designers, and flexible configuration for different application scenarios."

CAR Tool unifies all major aspects of safety analysis by providing a multi-layered view of related safety components, including customizable analysis parameters and various results required by ISO 26262, such as single Point of Failure indicators (SPFM) and Potential failure Indicators (LFM). Based on three different patented technologies, this innovative tool also provides users with (random) hardware failure probability (PMHF) metrics assessment results, as well as an assessment of the reasons for each security target violation. These results can be displayed from the entire component down to each individual unit at different levels, accurately breaking down the FIT into the corresponding failure category (single point of failure, residual risk, potential failure, etc.), making it easy and efficient to navigate the safety analysis of complex system-on-chip (SoC)/microcontroller (MCU).

For a given product, the database provided by Renesas Electronics can be defined by different applications and precisely configured to match the components used in the target system. A powerful GUI is a window for product visualization that can be used to obtain and configure relevant security information. FIT features, fault characteristics, fault modes, fault effects, and fault ranges are just some of the parameters that the user controls.These characteristics make Renesas CAR Tool the safety analysis tool of choice for accurate, uniform and consistent analysis of components or systems and flexible customization for any application environment.

Key features of new GUI tools
● The efficient graphical user interface (GUI) is clear and easy to customize
● Support Renesas electronic device library import
● Libraries can be created and shared between interested parties or other vendors
● Automatically calculate ISO26262 hardware architecture indicators
● Calculate PMHF automatically and provide alternative methods
● Suitable for different security objectives
● Suitable for different application scenarios
● The configured gold database can be highly customized according to different application scenarios
● Precise revision control and change logging support
● Error recording
● Embed documentation and references
● All relevant security parameters can be customized, including:
(1) Fault characteristics
(2) Fault model
(3) Fault impact
(4) FIT characteristics and distribution
(5) safety-related status
(6) Security mechanism
(7) Fault coverage rate