Common Error Handler for SoC Functional Safety
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Solution Overview
Problem
As operational systems become more complex, existing functional safety systems face challenges in efficiently monitoring and reacting to errors across multiple devices and functions within a system, such as a system on chip (SoC), making it difficult to collect and aggregate error states effectively.
Innovation Solution
A common error handler (CEH) infrastructure is introduced to interface with multiple hardware blocks, detect errors, and execute diagnostic routines, including resetting or reconfiguring hardware blocks, while logging and reporting failures to ensure functional safety across the entire SoC or platform.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a common error handler is introduced to interface with multiple hardware blocks, then error detection and handling efficiency is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple individual error handling mechanisms into a single common error handler that interfaces with multiple hardware blocks. This consolidation improves reliability by providing unified error detection and handling across the system, while the modular design of the CEH itself manages the complexity through standardized interfaces and procedures.
2Reliability
If error monitoring is expanded across multiple devices and functions, then functional safety is improved, but difficulty of detecting and measuring errors increases
Solution Approach 1:
The common error handler acts as an intermediary between multiple hardware blocks and the system-level error management. It receives error messages from various sources, standardizes their format, and manages them through unified diagnostic routines. This intermediary approach simplifies error detection and measurement by providing a single point of access and standardized processing for errors across the entire system.
3Reliability
If diagnostic routines are executed to handle errors, then system reliability is improved, but loss of time for error processing increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-configuring diagnostic routines and error handling procedures within the common error handler. When errors are detected, pre-programmed diagnostic routines are automatically executed, reducing the time required for error processing. The CEH is designed with built-in diagnostic capabilities that can be activated immediately upon error detection, eliminating the need for complex real-time decision-making and reducing processing delays.
Data Source
AI summary
Various systems and methods for error handling are described herein. A system for error reporting and handling includes a common error handler that handles errors for a plurality of hardware devices, where the common error handler is operable with other parallel error reporting and handling mechanisms. The common error handler may be used to receive an error message from a hardware device, the error message related to an error; identify a source of the error message; identify a class of the error; identify an error definition of the error; determine whether the error requires a diagnostics operation as part of the error handling; initiate the diagnostics operation when the error requires the diagnostics operation; and clear the error at the hardware device.