Evaluation of ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 metrics for transient faults of a multi-processor system-on-chip through radiation testing

Abstract

Functional Safety standards for programmable electronic systems require i) the evaluation of the probability of hardware failure occurring to the electronic system due to random faults and ii) a sound estimation of the capability of the system to correct or detect the presence of dangerous faults regardless of their probability to occur. This paper presents a methodology to quantify those metrics in relation to a specific class of failures, the Single Event Effects (i.e. Transient faults in ISO 26262 terminology). The methodology is applied using accelerated radiation data measured on a System-on-Chip targeting Automotive and Industrial safety-critical applications. The results show how SPFM, PMHF, SFF, PFH metrics are being calculated. Both SPFM and SFF result to be >99% in this experiment.