Where formal verification can help in functional safety analysis

Formal techniques seem to be a way to cope with the exploding complexity of functional safety analysis. Here, the overall fault propagation probability to a certain safety-point in the design must be analyzed. As a consequence, the careful verification of the design is no longer sufficient. In addition, the propagation of all possible faults potentially showing up at all of the design's internal nodes must be validated. But this is not only a complexity challenge. Safety standards have a probabilistic view on functional safety analysis results and aspects such as different fault and pattern probability must be considered and related to requirements such as confidence level and maximum FIT rate. Following an overview on verification challenges around functional safety analysis, we introduce our innovative concept on how formal formal techniques can substantially simplify industrial functional safety analysis ows.