In order to match the strict reliability requirements mandated by regulations and standards adopted in the automotive sector, as well as other domains where safety is a major concern, the in-field testing of the most critical devices, including microcontrollers and systems on chip, is a crucial task. Since the controller area network (CAN) bus is widely used in the automotive domain, the corresponding controller ubiquitously appears in all these devices. This paper presents a generic and systematic methodology to develop an effective in-field test procedure for CAN controllers based on a functional approach (i.e., on the adoption of self-test libraries). The method can be customized to match the requirements coming from different scenarios, and allows the test engineer to maximize the achieved fault coverage in terms of structural faults in the different cases. The experimental results we gathered on a representative CAN controller model show that, given two typical testing scenarios, we are able to detect (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.) of stuck-at faults, respectively, hence demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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Electronics employed in modern safety-critical systems require severe qualification during the manufacturing process and in the field, to prevent fault effects from manifesting themselves as critical failures during mission operations. Traditional fault models are not sufficient anymore to guarantee the required quality levels for chips utilized in mission-critical applications. The research community and industry have been investigating new test approaches such as device-aware test, cell-aware test, path-delay test, and even test methodologies based on the analysis of manufacturing data to move the scope from OPPM to OPPB. This special session presents four contributions, from academic researchers and industry professionals, to enable better chip quality. We present results on various activities towards this objective, including device-aware test, software-based self-test, and memory test.

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The development of Integrated Circuits for the Automotive sector imposes on major challenges. ISO26262 compliance, as part of this process, entails complex analysis for the evaluation of potential random hardware faults. This paper proposes a systematic approach to identify faults that do not disrupt safety-critical functionalities and consequently can be considered Safe. By deploying code coverage and Formal verification techniques, our methodology enables the classification of faults that are unclassified by other technologies, improving ISO26262 compliance. Our results, in combination with Fault Simulation, achieved a Diagnostic Coverage of 93% in a CAN Controller. These figures allow an initial assessment for an ASIL B configuration of the IP.@en