Wirral, United Kingdom. LDRA has extended its support for the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) with its competent analysis and verification tool suite built to support emerging RISC-V implementations such as Synopsys ARC-V processor IP. The suite provides enhanced tools for developers of RISC-V-based critical applications for aerospace and defense, mobile, industrial, IoT, artificial intelligence, and automotive.

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.

Wirral, United Kingdom. LDRA released its domain-specific software productivity packages for the LDRA tool suite. With these packages, designers can simplify processes and reduce costs by replacing disparate traceability, software analysis, and compliance reporting tools with a unified solution. Tailored to meet the functional safety and security standards of embedded industries including aerospace, automotive, industrial controls, rail transportation, energy, consumer devices, and medical devices.

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.

Wirral, United Kingdom. LDRA added the latest MISRA C 2023 guidelines to the static code analysis and reporting capabilities of its LDRA tool suite. Included is MISRA C:2012 Amendment 4 (AMD4) that combines prior versions of guidelines into a complete edition to improve compliance. "MISRA C guidelines drive the development toward safe, secure and reliable code and this release demonstrates our continued commitment to ensuring MISRA C:2023 compliance is accessible to every safety- and security-critical development team," said Ian Hennell, Operations Director, LDRA.

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.