Accellera Forms Functional Safety Working Group to Standardize Data for Interoperability & Traceability in the Functional Safety Lifecycle

Standard will target the capture and propagation of functional safety intent across different safety operations and work products

Elk Grove, Calif., February 18, 2020 -- Accellera Systems Initiative (Accellera), the electronics industry organization focused on the creation and adoption of electronic design automation (EDA) and intellectual property (IP) standards, announced today the formation the Functional Safety Working Group (WG). The charter of the new working group is to create a standard that improves interoperability and traceability in the functional safety lifecycle, specifically targeting analysis, design, verification and implementation operations and related safety work products.

“We have had tremendous participation and input from the community since the formation of our proposed working group,” stated Lu Dai, Chair of Accellera. “The industry is eagerly awaiting a standard that unifies functional safety best practices into an industry-agreed methodology supported by a functional safety format. We encourage anyone interested in contributing to advancements in this area to join us and help develop and shape this important standardization initiative.”

“Our objective is to develop a standard which captures and propagates the functional safety intent. This helps to better integrate analysis methods such as FMEDA, DFA and FTA and to enable a functional safety-aware design and verification flow for electronic circuits and systems,” stated Alessandra Nardi, Functional Safety WG Chair. “Enabling functional safety is a fascinating multi-disciplinary challenge which significantly benefits from alignment and standardization across the supply chain involving different industries and domains. With safety critical applications in mind, we are truly looking forward to this collaborative effort.”

The WG will initially focus its efforts on the development of a white paper to explain the motivation and possible directions in the creation of a functional safety standard, followed by a Language Reference Manual (LRM) that will provide the definition of the functional safety format.

Background on Functional Safety Working Group

The formation of the Functional Safety WG is the follow-up of a proposed working group that assessed the need for a standardized language or format to specify functional safety information and enable interoperability.

Key industry leaders from 19 companies have already committed to join the new WG.

The Functional Safety Working Group will meet regularly via teleconferencing. The next face-to-face meeting will be held the week of March 30 in Austin, Texas. To find out more about the working group, visit the working group page. If you are not already an Accellera member and are interested in joining in order to participate in the working group, visit here.

The Functional Safety WG will hold a Birds of a Feather at DVCon U.S. on Monday, March 2 from 6:30-7:30pm in the San Jose Room. Register for the meeting here. All DVCon U.S. attendees are welcome, including those with a free Exhibits Only pass. During the BoF, the ongoing activities of the Functional Safety WG will be discussed along with a Q&A with attendees interested in joining the development of this new standard.

About Accellera Systems Initiative

Accellera Systems Initiative is an independent, not-for profit organization dedicated to create, support, promote and advance system-level design, modeling and verification standards for use by the worldwide electronics industry. The organization accelerates standards development and, as part of its ongoing partnership with the IEEE, its standards are contributed to the IEEE Standards Association for formal standardization and ongoing change control. For more information, please visit www.accellera.org. Find out more about membership.