Safety is a critically important aspect of any automotive or industrial application. As automotive and industrial products become more autonomous, designers of these products face increasing pressure to meet standards for functional safety, which involves anticipating what could go wrong and taking steps to reduce risk to an acceptable level. Specific standards that address functional safety include IEC 61508 for industrial applications and ISO 26262 for the automotive industry.
Functional safety addresses two types of faults that can occur in an element such as an integrated circuit:
- Systematic faults result from design errors or flaws in the manufacturing process.
- Random hardware faults are unpredictable yet detectable and preventable using built-in functional-safety mechanisms.