Wirral, UK, April 14, 2011. LDRA, the leading provider of automated software verification, source code analysis, and test tools, joins Altium in integrating the LDRA tool suite and the TASKING VX-toolset for C166. The integrated solution brings compliance to safety standards such as MISRA, IEC 61508, and DO-178B to small-footprint microcontrollers like Infineon’s C166 family. Designed for scalability, the combined solution maximizes code reuse and process compliance for safety- and mission-critical software across automotive, industrial and avionics markets.
With the increased call for compliance to safety standards, development teams need integrated solutions that ease the challenge of proving compliance through all stages of the development lifecycle from requirements through coding, test and verification. LDRA stands alone in providing standard compliance across all stages of the lifecycle, whether for automotive with MISRA and ISO 26262, industrial with IEC 61508 or avionics/military with DO-178B. Thanks to an Eclipse-based framework, the LDRA-TASKING integration encompasses the entire C166 family and its derivatives.
Seamless integration between the TASKING compiler and the LDRA tool suite avoids tedious configuration challenges and enables developers to easily apply LDRA’s analysis and testing capabilities from within TASKING’s IDE. With a simple right click in TASKING’s IDE, developers can directly invoke LDRA analysis phases, gaining access to static analysis violations and code coverage, or quickly generate test cases, executing code on the target or TASKING simulator. With complete integration, all LDRA tool suite capabilities—from analysis to verification—can aid the TASKING developer in achieving certification compliance.
“Today’s customer is increasingly asked to certify applications that deliver more functionality within a shorter development cycle,” noted Harm-Andre Verhoef, Product Manager at Altium BV. “Automated software testing tools like those of LDRA deliver standard compliance and scalable solutions that test the applications on the target microcontroller no matter how small the footprint. Such capabilities ensure that automotive giants such as Daimler or industrial players like Siemens can meet their time-to-market goals within budget constraints.”
“Code reuse has become a fundamental way to cut development costs in today’s tight economy,” noted Ian Hennell, LDRA’s Operations Director. “Thanks to this integration, application developers using TASKING’s toolset can port code between standards, platforms and markets while maintaining superior code quality because of the scalability of the LDRA tool suite. This represents significant cost savings and superior ROI in choosing this combined solution, whether for medical, automotive or industrial applications.”
The integration with LDRA’s eXtreme Testing, the tool suite’s automatic test case generator, removes the time-consuming, error-prone process of test generation for TASKING-based applications. LDRA has revolutionized unit testing as it’s typically performed on the host and/or target systems with automatic test case generation. Building on LDRA’s automated unit testing tool TBrun, eXtreme Testing automatically populates unit test cases to the point of generating the test cases themselves.
Such automatic test vector generation enables developers to quickly achieve the required levels of compliance for safety standards. Thanks to the extendable nature of the LDRA tool suite, compliance for one standard or platform can be scaled to another. Customers developing for the automotive market, for example, can therefore sell the same component solution into industrial or avionics environments, simply adding the verification tasks required for the new environment.
The TASKING toolset—IDE, compiler and simulator—is built on the Eclipse framework. This modular framework ensures that the integration is kept up to date and able to support processors as they are added to the TASKING VX-toolset.
About LDRA
For more than 35 years, LDRA has developed and driven the market for software that automates code analysis and software testing for safety-, mission-, security- and business- critical markets. Working with clients to achieve early error identification and full compliance with industry standards, LDRA traces requirements through static and dynamic analysis to unit testing and verification for a wide variety of hardware and software platforms. Boasting a worldwide presence, LDRA is headquartered in the UK with subsidiaries in the United States and an extensive distributor network. For more information on the LDRA tool suite, please visit: www.ldra.com.
