Self-Diagnosis Circuit for Semiconductor IC Startup Safety
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Solution Overview
Problem
Semiconductor integrated circuits face challenges in detecting failures within restricted start-up times, leading to potential undetected faults and compromised functional safety, especially in safety-critical applications like automobiles.
Innovation Solution
Incorporating a self-diagnosis circuit that executes diagnostics when powered off, storing results in non-volatile memory, and upon powering on, determines failure states to shift to a safe mode or initiate normal operation based on stored records, ensuring timely failure detection and safety compliance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the self-diagnosis function runs for a long time to achieve high failure detection ratio, then the reliability is improved, but the start-up time increases which violates system restrictions
Solution Approach 1:
The self-diagnosis circuit executes diagnosis processing before the system starts normal operation (when powered off), storing results in non-volatile memory. This preliminary action allows failure detection to be completed in advance, eliminating the need for lengthy diagnosis during start-up and thus resolving the contradiction between high detection ratio and short start-up time.
2Reliability
If the self-diagnosis function is executed during start-up to ensure failure detection, then the reliability is improved, but the productivity decreases due to extended operation delay
Solution Approach 1:
Diagnosis processing is performed in advance before system operation begins. The self-diagnosis circuit stores diagnosis results in non-volatile memory during the powered-off state, so that when the system starts, it can immediately read the pre-stored results without delaying operation. This resolves the contradiction between ensuring failure detection and maintaining fast operation speed.
3Productivity
If the diagnosis processing is completed within restricted start-up time, then the productivity is improved, but the measurement precision of failure detection may be compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The self-diagnosis circuit performs comprehensive diagnosis processing in advance when the system is powered off, storing complete diagnosis results in non-volatile memory. This preliminary comprehensive diagnosis ensures high measurement precision, while the fast start-up is achieved by simply reading pre-stored results, thus resolving the contradiction between start-up speed and detection accuracy.
Data Source
AI summary
A semiconductor integrated circuit includes: a main circuit; a non-volatile memory; and a self-diagnosis circuit configured to execute, when the semiconductor integrated circuit is to be powered off, self-diagnosis processing in which the main circuit is diagnosed and a diagnosis execution record indicating whether the diagnosis is completed and a diagnosis result indicating a result of the diagnosis are stored in the non-volatile memory. The self-diagnosis circuit is configured to: determine, when the semiconductor integrated circuit is powered on, whether there is a failure in the main circuit by reading the diagnosis execution record and the diagnosis result out of the non-volatile memory; and shift a state of the main circuit to a safe state when determining that there is a failure in the main circuit, and instruct the main circuit to start normal operation when determining that there is no failure in the main circuit.