Infineon Technologies has released a watchdog timer for use in combination with the company's 32bit TriCore microcontrollers and the dedicated SafeTcore software. The CIC61508 offers monitoring features, which comply with the IEC61508 and ISO26262 automotive industry standards. The safety watchdog can be integrated into applications such as vehicle stability control, electric power steering, airbag control, damping systems, and powertrain controls. It monitors the main microcontroller used in embedded systems by providing features to detect common failure modes of clock, power supply and temperature-related computational errors on the microcontroller. The test features supported by the watchdog and stored in its ROM include an internal opcode test scheduler and sequencer, which generates a sequence of test requests with specific data and checks the response against a user defined table. The watchdog also has other monitoring functions such as the capability of detecting under-voltage and over-voltage in up to four power supplies, capability to monitor up to eight parallel data comparisons and verification functions, and an operating system task monitor to check the predefined dispatch sequence.
