The identification of safe faults (i.e., faults which are guaranteed not to produce any failure) in an electronic system is a crucial step when analyzing its dependability and its test plan development. Unfortunately, safe fault identification is poorly supported by available EDA tools, and thus remains an open problem. The complexity growth of modern systems used in safety-critical applications further complicates their identification. In this article, we identify some classes of safe faults within an embedded system based on a pipelined processor. A new method for automating the safe fault identification is also proposed. The safe faults belonging to each class are identified resorting to Automatic Test Pattern Generation (ATPG) techniques. The proposed methodology is applied to a sample system built around the OpenRisc1200 open source processor.

中文翻译：

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基于处理器的嵌入式系统中安全故障的新类别

识别电子系统中的安全故障（即保证不会产生任何故障的故障）是分析其可靠性和制定测试计划的关键步骤。不幸的是，可用的 EDA 工具很少支持安全故障识别，因此仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。用于安全关键应用的现代系统的复杂性增长进一步使它们的识别复杂化。在本文中，我们确定了基于流水线处理器的嵌入式系统中的一些安全故障类别。还提出了一种自动化安全故障识别的新方法。使用自动测试模式生成 (ATPG) 技术识别属于每个类别的安全故障。