Safety design package accelerates certification for safety critical applications
Offered free-of-charge by STMicroelectronics, a functional-safety design package reduces complexity and IEC 61508 safety-certification costs for STM32-based safety critical applications.
The software has been created for designers of STM32-based devices in industrial controls, robots, sensors, medical, or transportation, which must be certified up to Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 2 or 3 of the recognised safety standard IEC 61508. The STM32 SIL Functional-Safety Design Package simplifies system development and certification, claims ST.
Believed to be the first of its kind in the industry, the SIL Functional-Safety Design Package comprises documentation and the X-CUBE-STL, a software Self-Test Library certified to IEC 61508 SIL3. Documentation comprises safety manuals that detail all applicable safety requirements, or conditions of use, with implementation guidelines to help developers certify their products to SIL 2 or SIL 3 in accordance with IEC 61508. Also included are the mandatory Failure-Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA), containing the detailed list of microcontroller failure modes and related mitigation measures, and Failure-Mode Effects and Diagnostics Analysis (FMEDA), which gives a static snapshot reporting IEC 61508 failure rates, computed at both the microcontroller and basic functions detail levels.
The software is initially available for the STM32F0 series, although ST has already announced that it will continue to introduce equivalent packages for all other series in the STM32 family throughout 2018 and 2019. There are currently more than 800 STM32 microcontroller variants, offering developers price, performance, and feature options.
TÜV Rheinland has positively assessed X-CUBE-STL-F0 according to the functional safety standard IEC 61508:2010. Detailed information of the certificate will be soon available on www.fs-products.com.
Swiss-based sensor manufacturer Contrinex is the first to use ST’s Functional-Safety Design Package to certify safety products based on STM32F0 microcontrollers.
The Functional-Safety Design Package for STM32F0 microcontrollers is available, free of charge, subject to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with ST.
The software self-test library, X-CUBE-STL, is a software-based diagnostic suite for detecting random hardware failures in STM32 safety-critical core components comprising the CPU, SRAM, and flash memory. The diagnostic coverage is verified by ST proprietary fault injection methodology. Integrated with the STM32Cube workflow, it is application-independent allowing use with any user application, and is delivered as compiler-agnostic object code.
X-CUBE-STL-F0 has been positively assessed by TÜV Rheinland according to the functional safety standard IEC 61508:2010, verifying that it fulfils the software systematic capability SC3.
