Imagination Technologies has introduced an innovative approach to functional safety in GPUs for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Traditional methods like dual-core lockstep or workload repetition can significantly increase chip area or reduce performance. To address this, Imagination developed Distributed Safety Mechanisms that embeds safety features throughout the GPU core. This approach achieves over 90% single-point fault detection while minimising the impact on performance, power and limiting area overhead. Additionally, their patented Safety Pairs technique utilises idle processor thread cycles to run diagnostic tests, comparing outputs to detect faults in real time. These mechanisms operate transparently to the user and reduce the complexity and cost of implementing safety at both hardware and software levels. Designed for scalability, this safety-first GPU architecture supports compute and AI acceleration, making it ideal for processing intensive automotive tasks like LIDAR mapping and sensor fusion while meeting ASIL-B standards efficiently
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