The IEC61508 norm for functional safety of electronic safety-related systems introduces a deterministic approach to evaluate the robustness of a given Equipment Under Control or EUC since it also rules the documentation to be delivered with the safety system concerning the implementation and the validation flow of both HW and SW. For system sub-components such ASICs or IPs, to follow this norm means a complex analysis and evaluation procedure.

The starting point of faultRobust technology is the definition of the Safety Requirements Specification (SRS) with the safety or robustness targets to be fulfilled by the EUC.
The Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is the foundation of the validation procedure. Particular attention is paid to failure modes specified in IEC61508-2. Diagnostic Coverage (DC) and Safe Failure Fractions (SFF) are computed: in this way it is possible to precisely position the component or sub-system under analysis in the SIL table of IEC61508-2.

As required by the IEC, faultRobust technology uses fault injection at all the different stages of the validation procedure: to validate the FMEA, to assess the safe failure fraction of the EUC including diagnostic, and at the end of the implementation stage. With an automatic flow, the FMEA results are used for fault list generation and at the end of fault injection campaign the results assess and improve the quality of the FMEA.