Hybrid emulation approach in ISO 26262 compliant unit test process

There is a growing need to provide safety-compliant systems in the automotive industry due to the increasing complexity of technology. Incorporation of the additional safety and reliability standards, as addressed by ISO 26262, into the present automotive hardware design tends to magnify the time for implementation and verification, shrinking the timelines of later process to meet the project deadlines. This paper discusses a novel methodology to facilitate advanced test features in the design and a robust verification process using a hardware emulator. The paper also discusses the complex issues and challenges encountered in the deployment process. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the approach and increase in coverage in terms of safety features tested, while accelerating the validation process with respect to native simulation based alternatives.