Slide 1 Slide 2 Slide 3 Slide 4 Slide 5 Slide 6 Slide 7 Slide 8 Slide 9 Slide 10 Slide 11 Slide 12 Slide 13 Slide 14 Product List
Hercules MCU Overview Slide 2

There have been several safety standards that have popped up in the last few years which have been getting a lot of attention recently. These include international standards, IEC standards and ISO standards. Most of these standards are centered around safety. End customers and government bodies have been mandating that products comply with these international standards. Shown on this slide is an overview of some of the standards that exist around the world along with the industries they most apply to. The IEC 61508 standard (located at the bottom of the circle) is a general safety standard that applies across many industries that do not have a specific standard. This standard has been Texas Instruments focus with the TMS570 MCUs for a number of years. As other standards have emerged, specifically ISO 26262 in automotive, the TMS570 and RM48 are fitting very well into safety-critical applications. What makes Hercules different than a standard MCU, as far as safety goes, is that the architecture allows for protection against random and systematic faults. Additionally, it provides headroom for application differentiation in that it has so many safety features built in the hardware that customers do not use much of the CPU power or program space for the safety portion of the application. Finally, TI provides simplified development systems certification so customers do not have to develop the safety algorithms themselves and TI provides full safety documentation to aid in the certification process on the customers’ side.

PTM Published on: 2012-07-02