Importance of Dependent Failure Analysis for Safety-Critical IP and SoCs White Paper

Architectural independence is a cornerstone of automotive functional safety. The “Importance of Dependent Failure Analysis for Safety‑Critical IP and SoCs” white paper examines how dependent failures undermine this independence by allowing faults to propagate across elements. It outlines how DFA evaluates coupling factors, shared resources, and interactions between hardware and software to ensure that independence assumptions made during design are valid and enforceable.

What You Will Learn:

• How shared resources and interfaces create coupling between elements
• How dependent failure initiators compromise technical independence
• How DFA informs partitioning and architecture decisions
• How safety mechanisms are selected to control dependent failures