Equipment in industrial environments typically 24/7/365 has no operation in the whole year, so safety and reliability are critical. This means that the task key industrial design must be fully protected regardless of whether the power is turned on, when the system is turned off or started.
Although the mechanism of failure safety embedded system designs has been detailed, there is a new requirement in the industrial field, that is, increase functional safety compliance. Functional safety technology has brought completely standardized new security layers to focus on reliability industrial design.
From autonomous robots to intelligent transportation to intelligent transportation, a large amount of industrial design is affected by functional security technology. Components with functional security include CPU, SRAM, and flash chips. With secure authentication components, system developers can demonstrate the claimed specific security integrity level (SIL).
Support function security MCU
Functional security is a complex and time-consuming task that developers often resolve in industrial design. A good example is a system that handles robots interact with people. To design the system according to the latest functional security specification, not only need to interpret the harsh standard, but also choose a third party to provide software support.
In such an example, the dual MCU configuration can achieve simple security verification while using the diagnostic software. Therefore, embedded designers will not need to develop MCU-specific function security software.
Renesas Electronics's RX Series Microcontroller is an illustration. This series of microcontrollers is compatible with IEC 60730 feature safety standards and can help achieve fault security operations in the service equipment. Most importantly, Renesas recently added IEC 61508 SIL3 certified function security software for its RX series MCU. This new security feature will serve all RENESAS MCUs based on the company's RXV2 kernel.
This function security solution has a SIL3 system software kit, which has mutual diagnostics (prerequisite to double MCU structure) and implements software isolation between security and non-secure functions (Figure 1). Double Structure MCU design constructs around RX71M and RX651 microcontrollers.
Figure 1: Renes claims that by performing mutual diagnosis in a dual MCU architecture, the world's first SIL3 authentication is obtained. (Source: renesas electrictronics)
Another microcontroller that provides functional security for industrial applications is Texas Instruments Hercules RM57LX. With this device, the designer can easily comply with the IEC 61508 standard and provide a variety of security features for aviation slip, programmable logic controller (PLC), motor, and drivers, rail signals, and other industrial applications.
The RM57LX microcontroller is based on the security characteristics of Hercules MCU, with single bit error correction and dual-bit error detection, and instructions and data caches and selection of peripheral RAM buffers use error correction codes (ECC).
Functional flash memory
Functional security is usually associated with automotive design, but as shown above, it is also related to industrial design, especially industrial equipment for 24/7/365. In view of this, the flash must be considered carefully because it is another key building block in the mission-critical industrial system. It must also meet the applicable functional safety standards. In industrial design, this requirement pushes flash to the forefront to provide secure storage and reliable access to complex system code and algorithms.
Some flash architectures have multiple partitions that are independently optimized to achieve high durability and long-term data retention. High durability and data retention capabilities are critical to protecting industrial design from system failure.
For example, the SemperTM NOR flash memory of Cypress Semiconductor is built around the company's Enduraflex architecture (Figure 2). At the extreme temperature of -40 ° C to + 125 ° C, its durability exceeds one million programming / erase cycle, and the data retention period is at least 25 years. For frequent data writing, the Enduraflex architecture provides a configurable partition, 512 MB density portions provide up to 1280,000 programming - erase cycles, 1 GB section provides up to 2.56 million programming - erase cycle .
Figure 2: Semper NOR flash architecture block diagram shows the embedded functional security and reliability construct block. (Photo Source: Cypress Semiconductor)
Semper NOR flash provides secure boot and error correction feature to ensure that the industry is safe and reliable. In addition, it can generate embedded ECCs during memory array, which also supports single ECC and dual ECC. Please note that the MCU vendor NXP Semiconductors uses the Semper Nor flash in its industrial MCU products.
Functional security tool set
This is the last part of the problem - the tool set of safety-critical industrial systems and equipment. Now, the tool set of industrial embedded systems is catching up with the trend of functional safety.
The number of embedded systems with functional security requirements is steadily increased, and at the same time, the demand for security analysis tools is also growing. Such tools can run and analyze problems such as functional security certified components.
Quantitative analysis techniques such as fault mode impact and diagnostic analysis (FMEDA) can help determine the validity of components (such as MCU secure integration). Then, there is also a diagnostic software tool that fills the blanks between hardware security measures and the clear security requirements.
For example, Renesas has been using the IAR Systems authentication tool kit to develop diagnostic software for embedded applications. As shown in Figure 3, IAR Embedded Workbench for RX MCU includes a high performance compiler and debugger that is integrated into an easy-to-use integrated development environment (IDE).
Figure 3: This figure shows how IAR Embedded Workbench promotes security related software development of the RenesAs RX microcontroller. (Source: IAR Systems Software)
In order to improve the reliability of industrial design, the tool set used to verify the safety key system can focus only on relevant security. Toolset usually with rich graphics content and warning indicators and text.
Most importantly, security design must be "soft and hard". Fortunately, these two parts are now available for developers.
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