Embedded Computing Design

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are the newest frontiers for developers of safety-critical embedded software. These technologies can integrate and analyze data at a massive scale and support capabilities with human-like intelligence. As functional safety practitioners who are used to risk mitigation processes and techniques decades in the making, developers working in this field must adapt to the huge promise of AI/ML without compromising safety at any level of the systems they are building.

Embedded software developers face unique challenges when dealing with timing and interference issues on heterogeneous multicore systems. Such platforms offer higher CPU workload capacity and performance than single core processor (SCP) setups but their complexity can make strict timing requirements extremely difficult to meet.

Developing software compliant with MISRA C requires planning, documentation, and tools that best enforce the intent and spirit of the guidelines. Used in the development of safety- and security-critical software systems, the 2023 release of MISRA C:2012 Amendment 4 (AMD4) and MISRA C:2023 address concurrency features introduced in the latest two versions of the C standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011 and 2018) and consolidate all MISRA C versions into one document.

As the saying goes, the cost of “failing to build the right product or to build the product right” impacts revenue and reputation. The only way to build the “right product” is to develop requirements that are both effective and traceable down to the software. This enables development teams, quality assurance (QA), and certifying authorities to examine any function in the software to determine its purpose by tracing it back to a requirement.

Modularity and composability are popular buzzwords in software, for everything from enterprise computing down to bare metal applications. For safety-critical embedded systems, these concepts define goals for software reuse by enabling the use of existing software components in different combinations for different use cases.

Today’s software-based, safety-critical systems depend on certified software tools and processes for development. For many applications, tool qualification is a necessary step in ensuring the tool chain produces quality code to fulfill the needs of applicable safety standards. In many cases, the use of TÜV certified tools is sufficient but there’s an increasing number of very high-stakes applications where the functional safety standards demand more.

While connected systems have resulted in new opportunities for easier monitoring, upgrading, and enhancement, they have also presented more vulnerable attack surfaces. Unfortunately, no single defense of a connected system can guarantee impenetrability. Fortunately, there are multiple levels of security to ensure that if one level fails, others stand guard.

It is likely that patients in the U.S. are benefitting less than they should from technological advances in medical care.

MISRA and the AUTOSAR partnership announced that their two C++ language subsets are to be integrated together.

For C and C++ developers, around 80 percent of software defects are caused by the incorrect use of about 20 percent of the available language constructs.

Connectivity changes the notion of the development process ending when a product is launched, or even when its production is ended.

Best practices dictate that security, like functional safety, can?t be an afterthought. It must be part of the software development life cycle as a whole.