New View Requirements for Analogue/MS IPs for Dependability Optimization in Heterogeneous SoC Design

Nowadays, safety-critical systems in for instance the automotive industry routinely consist of complex Systems-on-Chip in increasingly advanced processes. The decreased reliability for advanced processes, along with the harsh environmental conditions in cars, causes serious concerns for the dependability of those SoCs. For this reason, some digital IP vendors for those systems are already starting to incorporate additional information on IPs to system designers, for instance to include safety parameters. This provides system designers with a possibility to optimize/guarantee their design along an additional design axis (e.g. safety). As most automotive SoCs incorporate analogue front/back-ends, a similar requirement would also have to be included for analogue/mixed-signal IPs. Because of limited robustness, and a variety of parameters, this has not been considered for analogue/mixed-signal IPs yet. This paper presents a first step towards the introduction of a dependability view for analogue/mixed-signal IPs, and an investigation which benefits like increased dependability could be expected at system level.