Reducing Steps to Achieve Safety Certification

This paper describes the steps to achieve certification for an FPGA implementation of an application certified for functional safety. Safety is a critical system requirement in developing machinery that must comply with worldwide standards such as the IEC 61508 basic functional safety standard. Altera's pre-qualified Functional Safety Data Package shortens development and certification time and reduces certification risks in safety-critical industrial applications. Altera worked with TÜV Rheinland and obtained qualification for their FPGAs, IP, design flow, and development tools, which means that these tools, methodologies, and devices are sufficiently free of systematic errors and can be used in safety-critical applications.