Driving Compliance with Functional Safety Standards for Software-Based Automotive Components

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T oday’s automobile is a technology hub on wheels, with connected

systems and embedded software that offer everything from

communications and route planning to automated driving functions

such as collision avoidance and lane departure warning systems. Self-driving

cars are not far off, with several automobile manufacturers expecting their fully

autonomous vehicles to be on the road by 2021.

While it’s still too early to predict all the ways that driverless cars will

transform our lives, there is certainly the huge potential for making driving

safer and drastically reducing the number of traffic-related deaths per

year. But before autonomous vehicles can improve safety, developers

need to make sure the software itself is safe — that is, working correctly

in every situation.

For that reason, many products for the automotive industry are now subject

to both existing and future functional safety standards. These regulations

— in tandem with the increased complexity of the systems themselves

— present new challenges for product development teams, which must

understand how functional safety specifications impact product life cycles in

order to manage their tools and processes effectively.

This paper looks at the challenges companies face when addressing

the intersection of functional safety and efficient, collaborative product

development. It describes how a Fortune 100 semiconductor company is

meeting these challenges for its automotive-related technology with an

integrated and compliance-ready solution that streamlines the development

of products that adhere to relevant functional safety standards.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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PUTTING FUNCTIONAL SAFETY IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT

In the auto industry — as in almost every industry — software-driven and

connected systems have become the mainstay of innovation. Vehicles

now ship with tens of millions of lines of code that manage engine and

transmission controls, braking, steering and a host of diagnostic information

on every subsystem — and these are just the cars that still need drivers.

In self-driving vehicles, these lines of code will rise to the billions. This is why

it’s no longer enough to simply verify that a car’s physical parts meet various

safety standards. Today’s automotive designers must also address safety in

system, hardware, and software design.

When the software works as planned, autonomous vehicles can parallel

park themselves, automatically adjust speeds, and switch from electric to

gas power in an instant, offering potential benefits that range from safer

roadways to increased mobility for seniors and the disabled. Consumers can

save trillions of dollars due to lower fuel consumption, accident avoidance,

productivity gains, and congestion avoidance.

When code fails, however, tragedy can occur.

“As more and more products and systems incorporate complex microelectronics and software, it is increasingly challenging to assess and implement safety-related functions.” —UL, THIRD-PARTY SAFETY SCIENCE COMPANY

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In acknowledgement of the auto industry’s increased reliance

on software, the International Organization for Standardization

created ISO 26262 in 2011 as a detailed, industry-specific guideline

for all software in automotive systems and equipment. Adapted

from the more generic industrial functional safety standard, IEC

61508, ISO 26262 is similar to regulations in other industries.

ISO 26262 provides a risk-management approach that includes the

determination of risk classes — known as automotive safety integrity levels,

or ASILs — which are similar to the safety integrity levels specified in the IEC

61508 standard. And every technology and software component throughout

the supply chain needs to comply with relevant parts of the ISO 26262

functional safety standard.

ISO 26262 is an international standard that defines functional safety for automotive equipment throughout the life cycle of all automotive electronic and electrical safety-related systems.

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IMPROVING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT The vast increase in the amount of software underpinning today’s vehicles,

combined with the stringent requirements for safety and reliability, are

driving unprecedented levels of complexity in product development. If

companies don’t have the right tools to track development and document

their products’ compliance, they risk drowning in the challenges.

A Fortune 100 semiconductor company experienced this increased

complexity firsthand. Because the company bases its business on constant

innovation, it faces the same product development challenges as many

businesses:

• Supporting increased interdependency among vertical groups

• Facilitating external collaboration with partners and consortiums

• Increasing integration at each step of product development to accelerate time-to-market for high-quality products

• Tracking the multitude of details required for functional safety compliance, for example, collecting and collating evidence that teams are following processes

To meet these challenges, the semiconductor company set about

transforming its business using standardized development processes

and application life-cycle management (ALM) tools. ALM supports the

development process from initial planning through product retirement,

including tracking application changes.

Achieving transformation of the development process means the

semiconductor company needed to:

• Reduce more than 50 disparate tools and applications to a manageable set of best-of-class solutions, including ALM software that supports ISO 26262 compliance

• Provide support for new functional safety and quality regulations so development teams can pass product audits and avoid the costs and delays of rework associated with product and audit failures

• Add a global data repository and data analysis capabilities

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ADOPTING MODERN SOFTWARE THAT SUPPORTS ISO 26262

As the semiconductor company began winnowing its toolset, it considered

what the perfect ALM solution might look like. The company quickly realized

the software would have to provide, at minimum, the following:

• End-to-end traceability of the entire V-model, including requirements, functions, implementations, and tests throughout the life-cycle process (see figure)

• Requirements management

• Validation and verification

• Change management

PRODUCT LIFE-CYCLE V-MODEL INCORPORATING FUNCTIONAL SAFETY

1. Vocabulary

2-5 2-6 2-7

3-5

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-96

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98

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3. Concept phase

5. Concept phase 6. Product development at thesoftware level

7. Production and Operation

2. Management of functional safety

4. Product development at the system level

8. Supporting processes

9. ASIL-oriented and safety-oriented analyses

10. Guideline to ISO 26262

Safety Concept

Requirements

Architecture

Unit DesignImplementat

Unit Test

Module orIntegration

SystemTest

CustomerAcceptance

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CREATING AN INTEGRATED ALM SOLUTION WITH JAMA SOFTWARE AT ITS CORE

As the semiconductor company began putting together an integrated

ALM solution for development teams within its business units, it turned

to the Jama development platform it was already using elsewhere in the

organization. For automotive electronics providers, Jama offers better, faster

product definition, change management, and functional safety verification.

Certified by internationally-recognized testing body TÜV SÜD for developing

safety-related products to ISO 26262 (up to ASIL D) and IEC 61508

(up to SIL 3) standards, Jama offers a rigorous development environment

that the semiconductor company knew would help it meet its functional

safety requirements.

Jama’s solution provides built-in attention to process, decision-making,

and change analysis in real time. With actionable traceability, semiconductor,

and other connected device-related developers and manufacturers,

can work faster without sacrificing safety or quality. Jama provides the

semiconductor company’s development team with workflows for defining,

building, and testing automotive-related products that meet critical

functional safety requirements.

What’s more, by enabling companies to reuse requirements across design

teams and platform generations, Jama helps accelerate product design

— a key element of the semiconductor company’s business strategy. The

resulting integrated application life-cycle management solution links up the

best processes and tools and provides a single portal for accessing and

analyzing a master data repository.

Jama’s solution provides built-in attention to process, decision-making, and change analysis in real time.

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GAINING BUSINESS VALUE FROM STREAMLINED DEVELOPMENT

With standardized processes and a core group of innovative solutions, the

semiconductor company has removed many obstacles to development,

allowing it to do the following:

Deliver products to market faster By getting requirements right the first time, the semiconductor company is accelerating development cycles and delivering better products that achieve higher customer satisfaction.

Reduce product development costsThrough improved productivity and increased efficiency across development teams and business units, the semiconductor company is reducing the cost of product development. With Jama, teams can create a set of development-related assets once and reuse them across projects to eliminate the need to reinvent and reduce the threat of inconsistencies.

Improve qualityThe semiconductor company eliminates a large percentage of product defects by effectively managing requirements, which helps eliminate costly manufacturing rework. Jama helps the company detect problems early, when they’re less expensive to fix.

KEY WINS

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MOVING INTO HIGH GEAR WITH FASTER DEVELOPMENT AND SAFETY

When it comes to automobiles that depend on software from hundreds

of vendors to operate properly, functional safety requirements have

become a driving force — and, for some, a stumbling block — in

modern product development.

With the Jama platform, the Fortune 100 semiconductor company

developed an integrated ALM solution that moves quality and compliance

from a manual task to one that’s incorporated seamlessly into existing

workflows and best practices.

As a result, teams are spending more time on engineering and less time on

understanding and managing compliance processes and documentation.

The company now designs products more efficiently and releases them to

the market faster.

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ABOUT JAMA SOFTWARE

Jama Software is the product development platform for companies building

complex, smart and connected products. The Jama solution enables

enterprises to accelerate development time, mitigate risk, slash complexity

and verify regulatory compliance. More than 600 product-centric

organizations, including NASA, Thales and Caterpillar, use Jama Software

to modernize their process for bringing complex products to market.

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