Safety element for automobiles, production or health can be implemented on the own microcontroller chip: RISC-V processor AIRISC-SAFETY from Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS

March 2, 2023 -- The Fraunhofer IMS welcomes a new member to its RISC-V processor product family AIRISC - the AIRISC-SAFETY. The AIRISC-SAFETY has been successfully certified as »ASIL-D ready« (automotive safety integrity level) by TÜV SGS according to ISO 26262 and is now ready for the market. The certification means that industrial customers directly receive a safety element including a manual and can thus incorporate the AIRISC-SAFETY into their own chips as a basic element for functional safety. The TÜV certificate for the AIRISC-SAFETY was already awarded in December 2022.

Numerous new functions enable the AIRISC-SAFETY to provide precise, mission-critical monitoring

Specially developed for the Fraunhofer lead project ALBACOPTER®[1] and the automotive research project VE-DIVA-IC[2] (DE), the AIRISC has been adapted to ensure the monitoring of the communication interfaces and the connection from an autonomous drone to the bus network. In addition, the processor was enhanced with numerous functions that ensure functional safety and thus trouble-free operation of the mission-critical monitoring system. These include a redundant design of the actual computing cores (dual-core lockstep), protection of the memory connections by error-correcting codes (ECC) and a window watchdog for monitoring software execution. A specially developed hardware abstraction layer (HAL) encapsulates the functionality of the hardware platform and makes it available to the application as a system function.

Projects on functional safety of microcontrollers and electronic circuits at Fraunhofer IMS and beyond

In safety-critical applications, trouble-free operation is enormously important, especially for microcontrollers. By law or in companies from the automotive, health or production industry, there are high requirements for the control elements, which must be proven by certification. To this end, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is running the ALBACOPTER® and VE-DIVA-IC research projects, among others, which deal with the research field of functional safety of electronic circuits.

With the help of the new microcontroller, for example, the flight attitude of an autonomous drone could be controlled in a fail-safe manner. Other applications for which safety standards are mandatory and which the AIRISC-SAFETY can support with its functions are LiDAR-based control and data processing units of vehicles, applications from the area of critical infrastructures as well as health care.

The Fraunhofer IMS offers customized services for ASIC and FPGA integration around the AIRISC-SAFETY.

Want to try out the basic version of AIRISC? Go to Github here.

Purchase a license directly? Send us an email to sales@ims.fraunhofer.de

Fraunhofer IMS

For over 30 years scientists at Fraunhofer IMS in Duisburg have been dealing with the development of microelectronic circuits, electronic systems, microsystems and sensors. Because of its comprehensive know-how, the access to technology and the high-quality development work, the Institute is a globally recognized partner for the industry. In four business units and core competencies each, Fraunhofer IMS is dedicated to applied research, advance development for products and their applications. High-quality, efficient and marketable technologies and procedures that are used in a very wide range of branches take center stage in contract work.

www.ims.fraunhofer.de/en.html

Forschungsfabrik Mikroelektronik Deutschland (FMD)

The Fraunhofer IMS is part of the Research Factory Microelectronics Germany (FMD). As a cooperation of the Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics, we work together with the Leibniz Institutes FBH and IHP and 12 other Fraunhofer Institutes on innovations in the field of micro- and nanoelectronics in Germany and Europe. As a one-stop store, FMD has been combining scientifically excellent technologies and system solutions into a customer-specific overall offering since 2017. Under the virtual umbrella of FMD, the largest association of its kind in Europe has thus been created, with more than 4,500 employees and a unique diversity of expertise and infrastructure.

https://www.forschungsfabrik-mikroelektronik.de/en.html

[1] Funded by the internal Fraunhofer program of lead projects.

[2] VE-DIVA-IC is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the license number 16ME0283.