Functional safety controls based on soft error information

A method comprising:

• receiving soft error rate data, wherein the soft error rate data describes soft errors determined for one or more hardware components of a machine, and the one or more hardware components comprise logic to control at least a portion of physical functions of the machine;
• determine respective soft error rates for each of a set of classifications based on the soft errors described in the soft error data;
• identifying a plurality of vulnerability factors corresponding to the one or more hardware components, wherein the plurality of vulnerability factors comprise an architecture vulnerability factor (AVF), a time vulnerability factor (TVF), and a program vulnerability factor (PVF);
• performing derating of the soft error rate data using the plurality of vulnerability factors to generate derated error rate values for each of the set of classifications;
• determining a functional safety value from the derated error rate values;
• and
• determining whether the functional safety value is greater than or equal to a threshold value.

A system comprising:

• at least one data processing apparatus;
• a memory;
• a functional safety analysis tool, executable by the data processing apparatus to:
• receiving soft error data, wherein the soft error data describes soft errors determined for one or more hardware components of a machine, and the one or more hardware components comprise logic to control at least a portion of physical functions of the machine;
• categorize soft errors described in the soft error data according to a set of categories;
• identify a plurality of vulnerability factors corresponding to the soft errors;
• perform derating of the soft error rate data using corresponding vulnerability factors in the plurality of vulnerability factors to generate derated error rate data for each of the set of categories;
• determine a functional safety metric from the derated error rate values;
• and
• determine whether a functional safety threshold is violated based on the functional safety value.