FTF-IND-F1507

Many existing safety applications, e.g., in railway signaling, are based on aging, proprietary computing systems. These range from hard lock-step, hardware voting architectures, to software-based voting. Each approach brings costs in performance, scalability, life cycle and software development/portability. Some have not achieved Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 4 certification (per the EN 5012x rail standards), which is now a worldwide requirement. This presentation gives an overview of an architecture for a COTS fail-safe computer (ControlSafe™) that combines “loose” lock-step with hardware voting, to provide software transparency, scalability and SIL4 certification. The platform employs distributed Freescale QorIQ processors. Leveraging such a platform, safety application providers can plan technology refresh while maintaining the investment in/focus on their application software.

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