Jetson Safety Extension

Functional safety is about implementing protection functions to deal with the risk of system malfunctions. Functional safety is important in multiple applications like manufacturing, agriculture, robotics, construction, medical, avionics and others, to protect people, property and environment from unexpected or abnormal behavior of the system.

NVIDIA Jetsons approach to Functional Safety is to give access to the hardware error diagnostics foundation that can be used in the context of safety-related system design. Jetson Safety Extension Package (JSEP) provides error diagnostic and error reporting framework for implementing safety functions and achieving functional safety standard compliance. In addition, JSEP includes various documentation and guidance from NVIDIA safety experts to ease the functional safety process.

Address IEC 61508 and ISO 13849 functional safety standards in combination with the support provided by Jetson Safety Extension Package.

Jetson Modules Designed For Safety

NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial module includes the Xavier SOC which is TUV SUD assessed for meeting all applicable requirements for ISO 26262. The module also includes various safety extensions built -in:

Safety Cluster Engine (SCE), a dedicated ARM Cortex R5F lock-step subsystem for integrated fault detection.
In-System-Test (IST), LBIST (Logic Built In Self Test) & MBIST (Memory Built In Self Test) for detecting permanent and latent failures.
Hardware Safety Manager (HSM) and Error Collator (EC) for monitoring and reporting error signals.
Support for adding external safety MCU
DRAM & GPU ECC (Error-Correcting Code)*
SEC (Single Error Correction), DED(Double Error Detection) and Parity protection for each IP*
ARM CCPLEX RAS (Reliability, Availability and Serviceability)*
Temperature, Clock and Voltage monitoring*

*Feature is enabled by Jetson Linux and does not require JSEP

Jetson Safety Extension Package (JSEP)

Jetson Safety Extension Package provides error diagnostic and error reporting framework for implementing safety functions and concepts to achieve functional safety standard compliance.

Features:

Enables safety extensions built-in the Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial module
Diagnostic Monitoring including Safe State and FuSa State monitoring and heartbeat mechanism at various layers
Safe Communication using 3LSS architecture
Error reporting of hardware and software errors

Safety Documents

JSEP includes various documentations and guidance from NVIDIA safety experts to ease the functional safety process.

Available Under NDA

Safety Document	Content
Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial in Safety-Related Systems Application Note	Type of support provided with respect to systematic failures and hardware random failures Summary description of Safety Extension Documentation provided with JSEP ISO 13849 safety architecture examples Change impact analysis between ISO 26262 and ISO 13849 / IEC 61508

Available Under License

Safety Extension Document	Content
Xavier Safety Extension Manual	Detailed description of hardware diagnostics, with related assumption of use for System Implementer Error Reporting Strategy Support for Freedom from Interference
Xavier FMEDA & User Guide	Detailed Failure Modes Effects Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA), with the list of failure modes, related faults and potential errors, and the failure rate details for both permanent and transient fault models User guide that explains NVIDIA’s approach to FMEDA
Xavier SOC Assessment Report Summary	Technical Summary Report by the accredited certification body TUV SuD Rail for the testing of the SEooC Xavier according ISO 26262.
TUV Rheinland concept report on Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial in Safety-Related Systems Application Note (in progress)	Concept Report by the accredited certification body TUV Rheinland on Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial in Safety-Related Systems Application Note, including review of change impact analysis between ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 as provided in the Application Note.