Standards and certifications guide technology developments

摘要

Standards are critical to every kind of engineering—and certifications play a similarly vital role. A number of recent announcements highlight the role of both in the rapidly evolving automotive, aerospace, and medical-electronics engineering fields. For instance, Mentor Graphics (a Siemens business) recently announced ISO 26262 Qualification for its Oasys-RTL, Nitro-SoC and FormalPro Logic Equivalency Checker products as part of the expansion of its Mentor Safe functional safety assurance program. ISO 26262, titled Road Vehicles-Functional Safety, is a development of International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61508 and was first published in 2011, with the goal of reducing possible hazards caused by the malfunctioning of vehicle electronic and electrical systems. It is a topic that is taking on ever greater importance as more vehicle functions are managed by electronics and, in particular, as autonomous vehicles move out of the lab and onto the road.