Free tool

ASIL Determination Calculator (ISO 26262)

Pick a severity, an exposure and a controllability for the hazardous event. The calculator returns the ASIL, shows how it was reached, and lists the quantitative hardware targets that then apply.

Resulting ASIL
index
What this ASIL then requiresTarget
Single-point fault metric (SPFM)
Latent-fault metric (LFM)
PMHF

Take these into the FIT and PMHF budget calculator to see what failure rate and diagnostic coverage they imply.

Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, stored, or sent anywhere.

How the classification works

ISO 26262 does not assign an integrity level to a component. It assigns one to a hazardous event — a malfunction, in a specific operational situation, producing a specific harm. The same electronic failure can be QM in one situation and ASIL D in another, and that is the point of the method: it forces the conversation about where the part is used before anyone argues about how reliable it is.

Three questions decide it. Severity asks how badly people are hurt if the event happens. Exposure asks how much of the vehicle's operating life is spent in the situation where it could happen. Controllability asks whether a normal driver, or another road user, can act to avoid the harm once it starts.

Each answer carries an index, and the three indices add. A total of six or below is QM — outside the scope of ISO 26262's safety requirements, though not outside the scope of engineering judgement. Seven, eight, nine and ten give ASIL A through ASIL D. Because it is a sum, no single axis dominates: a life-threatening outcome that is almost never encountered and is easy to control lands lower than a moderate injury that is common and unavoidable.

The category definitions here are restated in plain language. The authoritative wording, and the guidance on how to argue a particular classification, is in ISO 26262-3. A classification is an argument, not a lookup — the rationale for each of the three choices is what gets reviewed, not the arithmetic.

The three arguments people lose

What follows from the answer

The ASIL sets the quantitative hardware targets shown above, and much else besides: the rigour of the requirements process, the independence of the people reviewing it, whether decomposition is available, and how much of the verification has to be independent. ASIL A carries no quantitative hardware-architectural-metric or PMHF target, which is often misread as "no analysis needed" — the qualitative requirements still apply in full.

If the answer is B or above, the next question is whether your architecture can actually reach those metrics. That is what the FIT and PMHF budget calculator is for, and it is the point at which most projects discover their diagnostic coverage assumptions were optimistic.

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