Renesas Electronics Corporation has launched new functional safety solutions that meet the IEC61508 standard for both its RA and RX Families of microcontrollers.

Renesas now offers IEC 61508 SIL3 certified self-test software for both Arm Cortex-M23 and -M33-based MCUs. Renesas also announced the IEC 61508 SIL3 certified PROFIsafe Application Software for RX MCUs.

Renesas is the industry's first semiconductor supplier to offer these hardware-software solutions.

Functional safety is a critical consideration across most industrial automation equipment, the company states. It is also becoming increasingly important in numerous other applications, including service robotics, medical, and building automation.

These requirements are often complex and place additional burden on overall development. In addition, many customers have limited experience with functional safety standards.

Renesas, with its work across industrial applications, has become an expert in functional safety solutions. The Renesas team help customers get to market faster by providing end-to-end support across the broad range of 32-bit MCU families, from concept to commercialisation, the company states.

Renesas offers comprehensive training and facilitates complimentary evaluation of software solutions. During development, Renesas certified solutions are designed to help accelerate customers' time to market and reduce total cost of ownership.

Commercial licensing is available for certified software solutions and technical support is provided throughout the entire product development process.

Renesas senior vice president IoT and infrastructure business unit Roger Wendelken says, “Companies of all sizes and in all geographies are seeking help in navigating functional safety requirements. We are proud to lead the industry in providing certified software solutions that complement our MCUs and assist our customers in getting to market faster.

When building a safety critical system using an MCU, it is required to provide device-level diagnostics. With Renesas SIL3 certified Self-Test Software solutions, customers can leverage IEC61508 certifications for the MCUs CPU, ROM, and RAM when certifying the overall system.

The Renesas Self-test Software kit currently supports Arm Cortex-M23 and -M33-based RA2, RA4, and RA6 series MCUs.

Safe network communication is a critical functional safety consideration for applications that use industrial ethernet. Renesas addresses this with the new PROFIsafe Application Software, strengthening its safety network offerings.

The new SIL3-certified PROFIsafe Application Software Kit realises PROFIsafe functionalities on PROFINET slave devices and eliminates the certification step for network communications.

The solution works together with Renesas industry certified SIL3 System Software kit for RX MCUs. The PROFIsafe Application Software supports RX200, RX600 and RX700 series MCUs. Self-test Software is already available for RX MCUs.

Both the Self-test Software for the RA Family and the PROFIsafe Application Software for the RX Family have been certified by TV Rheinland, the leading functional safety certification body.

Both the IEC 61508 SIL3-certified Self-test software kit and PROFIsafe Application Software kit are available now. In addition, Renesas offer reference documentation, an evaluation board for the RX family, and an IEC 61508 Certification Kit for RX compilers.