Arteris FlexNoC Resilience Package Enhances Redundancy, Fault Tolerance for Mission Critical Systems-on-Chip

New technology augments network-on-chip interconnect IP, boosting reliability while improving design flexibility for automotive, aerospace and industrial electronics

CAMPBELL, California — September 30, 2014 — Arteris Inc., the inventor and only supplier of silicon-proven commercial network-on-chip (NoC) interconnect IP solutions, today announced the new FlexNoC Resilience Package designed to increase reliability and lower the cost of developing resilient and fault tolerant systems-on-chip (SoCs). The FlexNoC Resilience Package enhances the benefits of Arteris FlexNoC network-on-chip fabric IP to automotive, aerospace defense, industrial equipment and other electronics markets requiring fault tolerance.

The creation of the FlexNoC Resilience Package is based on experience: For many years, companies such as Mobileye (in the EyeQ3 ADAS SoC), Texas Instruments (in various designs) and Renesas Electronics (in industrial and automotive designs) have used the existing Arteris FlexNoC product in fault tolerant SoCs.

Key features of the FlexNoC Resilience Package include:

• Unit protection by duplication and redundancy – similar to dual-core lockstep (DCLS) and required for ASIL B, C or D systems as specified in the automotive ISO 26262 standard
• Duplicate unit checkers and fault safety controller
• Built in Self-Test (BIST) for resilience functions
• Data protection by monitoring
• Data packet integrity checkers
• Easy partitioning of any SoC into resilient and non-resilient domains.

“The market for electronic controls in vehicles is in a revolutionary phase demanding new robust graphical user interfaces similar to our tablets and smartphones but without increasing distraction,” said Tom Hackenberg, Automotive Embedded Processors Principal Analyst for IHS Technology Incorporated. “Simultaneously, OEMs must maintain robust safety with features like advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). With the demand for media-rich and telematics head unit processors quadrupling in the next five years, the OEM’s challenge is merging the fast-paced design of the high-performance system-on-chip (SoC) solutions common to the wireless market with the time-consuming intense ISO26262 and ASIL certified microcontroller and microprocessors that have continued to provide us with safe and reliable control systems. While it is common to design separate electronic control units, this can increase cost and potentially create additional driver distraction.”

“To provide OEMs and their system suppliers with a choice, incumbent and emerging suppliers are developing new ways to provide both a rich user experience and mission critical certification,” Hackenberg continued. “A growing number are turning to safety- and security-optimized network-on-chip subsystems for SoCs, such as the FlexNoC Resilience Package, to lower the development costs and time it takes to achieve the ISO 26262 certification, enabling both media-intense processing and certifiable mission critical solutions in an integrated SoC.”

“The FlexNoC Resilience Package is a major new piece of technology which supports the objectives of mission critical SoC designers,” said Charlie Janac, President and CEO of Arteris. “System-level fault tolerance cannot be achieved by CPU dual-core lockstep and ECC features alone: Safety-critical portions of the entire CPU, SoC interconnect and memory path must be protected. With the FlexNoC Resilience Package, Arteris is helping our customers make more reliable and fault tolerant systems in shorter time and with lower cost.”

Semiconductor Designer Quotes

Mobileye

“We have worked with Arteris NoC technology since 2010, and are excited that Arteris has brought its significant engineering prowess to help solve the problems of fault tolerant and reliable SoC design,” said Elchanan Rushinek, Vice President of Engineering, Mobileye.

Altera

“Altera SoC FPGAs are architected to ensure customers have a solid foundation upon which to build their embedded systems, and using Arteris’ network-on-chip IP has helped us create a superior SoC FPGA,” said Ty Garibay, Vice President, IC Engineering at Altera. “The Arteris FlexNoC Resilience IP will make it easier for Altera to implement more dependable SoC FPGAs for fault tolerant systems in the future.”

Renesas Electronics

“Arteris FlexNoC fabric IP has been our choice for SoC development since 2008,” said Matthias Voigt, General Manager, Engineering Group, at Renesas Electronics Europe. “The data protection and redundancy features included in the FlexNoC Resilience Package will help us design and implement our fault tolerant SoCs faster and at a higher quality level than possible before.”

Availability

The FlexNoC Resilience Package is available immediately. It is a companion product to Arteris FlexNoC.

The FlexNoC Resilience Package product brief is available for download here.

The technical paper, “SoC Reliability Features in the FlexNoC Resilience Package,” is available for download here.

About Arteris

Arteris, Inc. provides Network-on-Chip interconnect IP and tools to accelerate System-on-Chip semiconductor (SoC) assembly for a wide range of applications. Rapid semiconductor designer adoption by customers such as Samsung, Altera, and Texas Instruments has resulted in Arteris being the only semiconductor IP company to be ranked in the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Technology Fast 500 lists in 2012 and 2013. Customer results obtained by using the Arteris product line include lower power, higher performance, more efficient design reuse and faster SoC development, leading to lower development and production costs. More information can be found at www.arteris.com.