Synopsys, Inc. announced its new automotive safety integrity level (ASIL) B-, C-, and D- Ready DesignWare EV6x Embedded Vision Processors with Safety Enhancement Package (SEP) to accelerate the development of automotive system-on-chips (SoCs). The EV6x Processors with SEP include differentiated hardware safety features, safety monitors, and lockstep capabilities for safety-critical designs. These features enable designers to achieve the ISO 26262 standard’s most stringent level of functional safety and fault coverage without significant impact on performance, power, or area compared to the non-ASIL Ready EV6x processors. The ASIL Ready EV6x Processors with SEP integrate scalar, vector DSP, and convolutional neural network (CNN) processing units to help speed certification of automotive systems that require deep learning functionality.
To accelerate the development of ISO 26262-compliant code, the ASIL D Ready DesignWare ARC MetaWare EV Development Toolkit for Safety provides the necessary tools, runtime software, and libraries to develop embedded vision and artificial intelligence (AI) applications for the EV6x Processors with SEP. The tools support software development with C/C++ and OpenCL C programming languages as well as open vision standards such as OpenVX and OpenCV. The MetaWare EV Toolkit also includes a tool to automatically map neural network graphs trained on popular frameworks such as Caffe and TensorFlow™ to the EV6x’s various processing resources for optimum execution.
The DesignWare EV6x Processors integrate scalar, vector DSP and CNN processing units for highly accurate and fast vision processing. With up to four vector DSPs that operate in parallel to the CNN engine, the EV6x Processors provide scalable performance that supports all vision algorithms and CNN graphs. An optional IEEE 754-compliant vector floating point unit, integrated into the vector DSP core, and its supporting software offer performance levels of up to 328 Gigaflops for single precision operations and 655 Gigaflops for half precision operations. The EV6x Processors with SEP option include state-of-the-art safety mechanisms and hardware safety features such as lockstep capabilities, ECC memories, error checking on core registers and safety-critical registers, a dedicated safety monitor, and a windowed watchdog timer for each core. An optional dedicated safety island monitors and executes safety escalations and diagnostics within the SoC and protects system bring-up.
The ASIL B, ASIL C and ASIL D Ready DesignWare EV6x Vision Processors with Safety Enhancement Package option are available now. The vector floating point unit and safety island options are available now. The DesignWare ARC MetaWare EV Development Toolkit is available now, and the ASIL D Ready certified DesignWare ARC MetaWare EV Development Toolkit for Safety is scheduled to be available in September 2018.
