Nios® V Processor: Lockstep Implementation

ID 833274
Date 10/07/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

6.7. Handling Faults (Safety Use Case)

Although the fRSmartComp primarily targets fail-safe applications, it can provide a certain degree of system availability, even after a fault. They are summarized into the Safety-related Use Cases. This sections describes these safety-related Use Cases and how they can be implemented at the system level.

fRSmartComp can enable three categories of safety Use Cases. These Use Cases are listed after including scenarios devoted to improving the solution's robustness rather than providing availability.

  1. Standard Fail Safe: A basic scenario where, after fault detection, a safe state is enforced.
  2. False Positive avoidance: Discrimination between faults occurred in the CPUs or fRSmartComp.
  3. Timeout on system reset or after fault detection: Critical alarm generated by fRSmartComp after a system reset or fault detection when the System Supervisor cannot access fRSmartComp for a specific duration.
Note: You must assess the use cases (except the Standard Fail Safe) based on the safety function requirements that you want to implement for the system, as well as the safety-related parameters that you plan to achieve (e.g., PFHd, PFDav, PST, fault reaction times).