Safety solution with SIL3 software certification for industrial equipment

Renesas Electronics Corporation has announced the new 'RX Functional Safety' solution for industrial applications that decreases the complexity of IEC 61508 SIL3 certification. Based on the RX family of MCUs, the new solution offers advanced functional safety for industrial equipment, which includes functions for chip self-diagnostics, claimed to be the world’s first SIL3-certified functional safety software and reference documents for users to develop the safety part of industrial applications. The whole functional safety support for industrial applications enables users to decrease the certification acquisition process by a year or more. “The need for functional safety is expanding to an ever wider variety of products, driving increased needs for shorter development times and lower costs,” said Masataka Nakao, manager, Functional Safety Industrial Service Division, at TÜV Rheinland Japan. “The Renesas solution that we have now certified provides both the diagnostic functions required in a functional safety MCU and the functions that make it easy to reuse software assets. We expect that the solution will allow both customers new to developing functional safety products, and customers with functional safety experience to improve their development efficiency.” “As robot-human interaction in industrial environments becomes more common, we have seen many customers struggling with the complex and often time-consuming challenge of functional safety, which is becoming a significant barrier for the industry,” said Akira Denda, vice president, Industrial Automation Business Division, Renesas Electronics Corporation. “We are confident that our new RX Functional Safety will contribute to saving their time and resources and can dramatically accelerate the broad adoption of industrial equipment supporting functional safety.”