Wednesday, June 9, 2021

Building IoT solutions for safety critical environments

 

Two years ago Microsoft acquired one of the most deployed RTOS products in the embedded market, proven across a vast range of industries and use cases – from mobile phones and fitness trackers, to security systems and spacecraft. According to VDC Research, Azure RTOS ThreadX has been deployed in more than 10 billion devices worldwide. Many of these 10 billion devices fall into the category of “safety critical” – where device failure could result in serious injury to people and/or severe damage to property and the surrounding environment. From inception, Azure RTOS is designed to meet the needs of safety critical devices and is rigorously tested and reviewed to ensure such safety critical requirements are fully realized. This process is memorialized through functional safety certification of Azure RTOS core components.

 

 

TÜV Off-the-shelf Certification

 

Azure RTOS core components have been certified by SGS-TÜV Saar for use in safety-critical systems, according to IEC-61508, IEC-62304, ISO 26262 and EN 50128. As part of the certification process, SGS-TÜV Saar has reviewed the extensive test suites for Azure RTOS core components. The Azure RTOS core component test suites, comprised of a large number of application simulations, effectively performs functional black box testing over each Azure RTOS core component code base. Each test suite exercises 100 percent of the generic Azure RTOS core component C code, which is validated by using code coverage analysis tools. Azure RTOS core component Safety Manuals provide quality assurance information along with guidance on the safe usage of Azure RTOS. This enables developers to use Azure RTOS in safety-critical software development for even the most rigorous Safety Integrity Level (SIL 4, Class C, ASIL D), according to IEC 61508, IEC 62304, ISO 26262 or EN 50128 without further qualification.

 

Reducing the time-to-market for building safety critical IoT devices

   

In many cases, industrial, medical, and automotive applications require compliance with safety and reliability standards to protect people and the environment.  Reliable, real-time performance is especially critical for systems involving human transport, medical monitoring, and industrial operations that could release hazardous materials or pose potential safety risk. Regulatory authorities pre-certify software to help ensure that it won’t become unavailable due to reduced quality or system inefficiency.  We now offer  off-the-shelf functional safety certification artifact packages for Azure RTOS core components to help developers get to market faster. These artifact packages include a safety manual and formal reports of test results from internationally recognized organizations, certifying that the code behind Azure RTOS core components have met rigorous industrial functional safety standards. By using these artifact packages, developers can focus solely on their firmware functional safety certification.

 

  

Reliability for non-safety critical IoT devices   

  

The functional safety certifications apply to the standard Azure RTOS core components code base available on GitHub. Because of this, even IoT devices that are not safety critical still benefit from the improved quality and reliability that results from the overall functional safety certification process. In addition, this also helps “future proof” Azure RTOS IoT devices if regulatory authorities down the road require functional safety certification.

 

Learn more   

  

Azure RTOS

Azure RTOS C SDK

Azure RTOS Documentation

 

Posted at https://sl.advdat.com/3gnB8Q4