Page 41 - EngineerIT October 2022

NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Functional safety certification packages for

Microchip FPGAs reduce time to market

ystems used in many high-reliability commercial
aviation, space, defence, automotive and industrial
Sapplications require certification to the IEC 61508
Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 3 functional safety specification. To
reduce the cost of this process and accelerate time to market
for system developers, Microchip Technology continues to
certify its products and tools to industry safety specifications
and has now added IEC 61508 SIL 3 certification packages
for two more of its system-on-chip (SoC) FPGA and FPGA
families.
“Microchip FPGA families have a broad and historically
strong position within the industrial market and are
recognised for the high reliability and security of our non- Arm® Cortex®-M3 processor and programmable analogue circuitry. The
volatile FPGA technologies,” said Bruce Weyer, corporate vice low density IGLOO 2 device consumes up to 50 percent less power than
president of Microchip’s FPGA business unit. “We also have a similar devices and is ideal for general purpose functions requiring more
long history of certifying our products and tools to IEC 61508 resources than alternative FPGAs can deliver.
SIL 3 and other safety specifications so the end-equipment Microchip is represented in South Africa by Altron Arrow.
certification process for our customers is much easier. Adding
these packages for our low power consumption SmartFusion For more details email Andrew at aathanasiou@arrow.altech.co.za
2 SoC FPGAs and IGLOO 2 FPGAs is a natural extension for
industrial customers who design high reliability products for
the smart grid, automation controllers, process analysers and
other safety-critical applications.”
Microchip’s safety packages are built on top of the
SEU-immune, flash-based FPGA fabric of the SmartFusion
2 and IGLOO 2 devices, and these FPGAs are certified by
independent safety assessor TÜV Rhineland®. Package Supporting excellence in
deliverables include certification of Microchip’s Libero®
SoC Design Suite v11.8 service pack 4 and associated automotive automation
development tools, plus 28 intellectual property (IP) cores,
safety manuals, documentation and device data sheets. A
safety certificate from TÜV Rhineland is also provided.
Microchip also helps protect customers’ long-term
certification investments through practicing customer-driven
obsolescence where Microchip commits to build devices
used in a certified system, as long as customers want to
order, and Microchip is able to obtain, all sub-elements of a
device. This increases confidence that certification will not
need to be repeated while also reducing the risk that a part
will unexpectedly enter end of life and force redesign or tool
flow changes.

About SmartFusion 2 SoC FPGAs and
IGLOO 2 FPGAs
Unlike static random access memory (SRAM)-based FPGAs, From optimising your processes for assembly to key
Microchip’s flash-based SmartFusion 2 and IGLOO 2 FPGAs vehicle components, OMRON has the expertise and
eliminate the need for triple module redundancy (TMR) technology portfolio to maximise productivity.
mitigation that increases total system costs. The SmartFusion
2 SoC FPGA is the only device to integrate an FPGA fabric,

industrial.omron.co.za
EngineerIT | October 2022 | 39