Source: Arm Author: Arm
    The automotive industry is undergoing rapid change as consumers increasingly demand safer, smarter and highly connected vehicles. At the same time, the overall complexity of automotive systems has increased significantly due to the rise of autonomous driving, electric vehicles, and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The industry must address these new safety challenges and ensure the safety of end users while providing a quality driving experience.

What is functional safety?
    Functional safety is critical to ensure that systems operate correctly in response to inputs, especially in the automotive and industrial iot sectors. It plays an important role in reducing residual risks by adopting rigorous processes and standards. This mechanism ensures the safe operation of the system under a variety of conditions, including protection against unacceptable risks due to the failure of electronic and electrical (E/E) systems in the vehicle.
    The goal of functional safety is to ensure that the vehicle can process input information correctly, thereby preventing breakdowns and safeguarding passenger safety. To achieve this, 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
Build the right security design
    When building a safety design for a product, strict safety requirements and goals must be met to reduce potential hazards. Key design considerations include implementation redundancy, diversity, software test library (STL) execution, and security state design to ensure system reliability. Arm's latest Automotive Enhancements (AE) portfolio offers scalable, customized solutions to meet specific safety requirements.

Risk management
    In order to build a functional safety system, risk analysis must be performed at the vehicle level to perform hazard analysis and Risk assessment (HARA) and failure mode and impact 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 family of processors.

Verification and validation
     Rigorous testing is essential, including hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) and software-in-the-loop (SIL) simulations. To achieve this, Arm and its partners are actively building virtual platforms to advance software development, reducing development cycles and ensuring scalable redeployment across a wide range of vehicle models.

Supplier management
    Efficient communication between Oems and Tier 1 suppliers is essential. The Arm ecosystem includes partnerships with automotive industry leaders, ensuring smooth access to the necessary tools, resources and expertise for efficient supplier management.

Life cycle management
    Promoting a safety culture and implementing continuous improvement processes are integral to maintaining high safety standards. The Arm Flexible Access solution enables Oems and Tier 1 suppliers to cost-effectively evaluate different IP computing platforms, enabling more informed selection of vendor system-on-chip (SoC) offerings.

Documentation and traceability
     Keeping detailed documentation and ensuring traceability of safety requirements is key. With Arm's Partner program, Arm provides full support and helps achieve functional safety compliance with industry-leading security solutions to support the Arm AE portfolio.

Choose the right technology for the right use case
     Functional safety requirements vary from use case to use case. Autonomous systems are required to achieve an ASIL D integrity level, while less important systems may only need to achieve an ASIL B level. The Arm Reference Design-1 AE for the automotive sector offers a high-performance Arm Neoverse V3AE CPU and a Cortex-R82Ae-based safety island for additional safety monitoring. The Cortex-R82AE processor meets the requirements of ASIL D with high reliability.
    Choosing the right technology is extremely necessary. Arm offers computing solutions tailored to different security needs. The Cortex-R processor is designed for safety islands and real-time automotive applications, while the Cortex-A processor handles complex computational tasks such as autonomous driving with split core, lock step and mixed mode. Example choose the right technique

The important role of software
    Software is essential for optimizing functional safety and ensuring an outstanding driving experience in the automotive industry. Arm STL offers a comprehensive range of test and verification tools to enhance the safety of automotive applications. These libraries help developers ensure that their software meets the stringent safety standards of the automotive industry.
    Arm's Functional Safety Runtime System (FuSa RTS) is a suite of certified software components that reduce the time and effort required to achieve final safety certification in a variety of embedded applications. The system includes a robust real-time operating system (RTOS), a separate processor abstraction layer, and a C code base that is highly optimized and validated for Cortex-M processors by Arm architecture experts. It is optimized for native use of functional safety compilers and Arm's embedded toolchain Arm Keil MDK.
    In addition, Arm relies on a large ecosystem of partners, including SOAFEE members, to build functional safety and automotive safety software applications. SOAFEE (Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge) is an ARM-led initiative to bring together the automotive and software industries to make artificial intelligence (AI) software-defined cars a reality. SOAFEE has created a new ecosystem of software solutions to support the chip development and deployment process by enabling software consistency, which is critical for the Arm Automotive Computing Subsystem (CSS) to be launched in 2025.

The Arm platform is the cornerstone of future automotive safety
    As the automotive industry continues to innovate, the importance of functional safety will only grow. Based on the Armv9 architecture, the new Arm AE processor brings server-grade performance and advanced safety features to automotive applications, ensuring that the cars of the future can meet the growing demands of automation and connectivity. Arm AE processors are flexible and efficient, increasing the efficiency of safety-critical computing tasks by up to 30 percent and providing a solid foundation for future automotive innovation.
    For more than 30 years, Arm has been a trusted leader in secure computing for the automotive industry. The Arm AE portfolio provides Arm's partners with a rich set of options to meet their needs, whether the different processing units in the solution are positioned at ASIL B level or with full ASIL D functionality. In addition, with a well-established ecosystem, Arm is building full-stack software solutions that run on the latest Arm AE products across a wide range of automotive applications, including area control, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), ADAS and Automated Driving Systems (ADS). This, combined with Arm's supporting software, including STL and SystemReady, enables a wide range of functional safety features and optimizes performance, power consumption and area (PPA) for the safety functions required by automotive computing systems. With a powerful combination of software and hardware innovations, the Arm platform will ensure the safety of cars today and in the future.