Safety model/concept for the i.MX8 SOC

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i.MX8 Series of Application processor has following families.  Below detail is provided with respect to safety only.

  1. i.MX 8 Advanced Graphics, Performance and Virtualization
  2. i.MX 8X Safety certifiable and efficient performance
  3. i.MX 8M Advanced Audio, Voice and Video
  4. i.MX 8M Mini Embedded Consumer and Industrial Applications

i.MX 8X family is the first i.MX offering to feature Error Correcting Code (ECC) on the DDR memory interface, combined with reduced soft-error-rate (SER) and increased latch-up immunity, opening new opportunities for innovative industrial and automotive applications.

Automotive safety certification is also supported up to ASIL-B for cameras and displays by leveraging an advanced SafeAssure® display controller with failover safety planes and a real time domain that is independent of the Cortex-A CPUs and 3D graphics accelerators. This is said to enable automotive safety certification of up to ASIL-B for cameras and displays.

Industrial safety certification is supported up to SIL 3 by leveraging ECC on the L2 cache and DDR3L memory interfaces, enabled by several popular commercial RTOS solutions from QNX, Green Hills and others. This should be out of scope for us, I believe.

i.MX 8X Key Features:

  • Safeguard Mission Critical Displays and Control Functions
    • Increase system accuracy – ECC to support SIL 3
    • Ensure your display stays up and correct – SafeAssure® ASIL-B ready HW protects critical info with fail-over-capability
    • Advanced programmable security
    • Improved system reliability with FD-SOI
    • Offload time-critical tasks

The platform is compliant with ASIL-B, ensuring that screens “stay up” even in the event of a system crash. This family supports up to 16 hardware-based firewall domains engineered to isolate crashes, external attacks, and other system level issues. The SoC’s “SafeAssure Fail-Over” display controllers monitor the system’s graphics pipeline in order to automatically transition to a fully isolated display path if necessary.

For more detail, we would need i.MX 8/8X Applications Processor Safety Manual. It is not public document so we need to contact NXP Distributor.

Additionally, Freescale has Functional Safety Solution program(SAFE ASSURE) helping design-in SafeAssure products and achieving system-level functional safety compliance. https://www.nxp.com/applications/solutions/automotive/functional-safety-and-security/safeassure-functional-safety-program:SAFETYPRGRM

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