A design for safety methodology is essential to trim automotive design costs, but at this point it’s a work in progress.
by Ann Steffora Mutschler
Designing chips for the automotive market is adding significant overhead, particularly for chips with stringent safety requirements.
On the verification side it could result in an additional 6 to 12 months of work. On the design side, developing the same processor in the mobile market would take 6 fewer man months. And when it comes to complex electronic control units (ECUs) or SoCs, the difference is more dramatic.
Automotive chips must combine all of the reports on failure modes, effects, and diagnostic analysis (FMEDA). That adds significant effort to the design team’s workload. It also slows down time to profitability.