Wirral, U.K., and Santa Barbara, CA. May 13, 2015—LDRA,the leader in standards compliance, automated software verification, source code analysis, and test tools, and Green Hills Software, the worldwide leader in high assurance operating systems, have partnered to provide high-assurance application development on multicore platforms used in safety- and security-critical markets.
The growing emergence of multicore platforms and applications paves the way for new verification tool capabilities needed to complete high-assurance safety- and security-critical compliance activities. LDRA has developed such capabilities in partnership with Green Hills Software, resulting in a solution that enables developers to fully trace the behavior of multicore systems—a critical step forward in achieving regulatory compliance.
Multicore Traceability Fundamental to System Analysis and Debug
LDRA’s uniquely optimized trace technology efficiently captures software runtime dynamics and behavior from multiple cores. As a result, safety- and security-critical coverage analysis is safely and efficiently aggregated without degrading runtime performance and without sacrificing the integrity of the Green Hills Software multicore application environment. The LDRA tracing technology is integrated with the Green Hills Software development tool chain to provide unprecedented system analysis and debug capabilities.
For the safety- and security-critical multicore market, Green Hills Software provides the INTEGRITY®-178 tuMP™ (time-variant unified multiprocessing) real-time operating system (RTOS). Shipping since 2010, INTEGRITY-178 tuMP provides system and application developers superior flexibility to concurrently schedule and utilize multiple cores within and across applications. As a partitioning enforcing RTOS, applications of different safety and security assurance levels can concurrently execute on a multicore platform. The Green Hills MULTI® integrated development environment (IDE) provides application development for C, C++, and Ada programming languages. The partnership efforts integrate the LDRA structural coverage solution within the MULTI IDE, unifying management of multicore application development, debug, and verification.
With the LDRA multicore instrumentation support, structural coverage analysis can be captured at the individual core or aggregated to provide a multicore system-level view. Results are portrayed graphically, enabling developers to follow the flow of code execution and to assess system behavior at core and system levels. With structural coverage analysis down to the object-code level available on host and target platforms, the LDRA solution supports the highest levels of safety-critical standards compliance. Automated reports capture testing analysis and techniques, reducing potentially hundreds of hours of documentation needed to achieve compliance.
“LDRA has invested time and research to provide verification tool solutions for safety-critical software developers targeting multicore architectures,” said Dan O’Dowd, founder and chief executive officer of Green Hills Software. “These efforts have positioned LDRA as the leading provider of high-assurance testing and verification tools for INTEGRITY-178 tuMP systems and enabled users to successfully complete the required compliance activities.”
“Green Hills Software and LDRA have led the certification and compliance markets for decades, delivering software development and testing tools that automate and rigorously enforce safety and security standards,” confirmed Ian Hennell, LDRA operations director. “Thanks to our partnership, for the first time, multicore application developers have the potential of achieving DO-178B/C Level A compliance. That’s a huge step forward for the aerospace and defense industry and offers similar promise for industries such as rail transportation, industrial automation, and automotive.”
Tool Features Accelerate Multicore Development and Test, Reducing Cost
With the integration of compliance-optimized development and testing software, software tools now automate multicore software development and test, streamlining multicore development and verification. This permits developers to fully utilize reductions in size, weight, and power (SWaP) provided by multicore systems.
- Additional strengths of the LDRA multicore structural coverage solution include the following:
- Object code verification for Green Hills compilers is supported for C, C++, and Ada languages, providing more flexibility in development processes;
- Data and control coupling provides insight into multicore architecture and behavior, showing the actual flow of control and data across the system;
- Extensive I/O support between host and target provided by the Green Hills MULTI IDE supports multiple debug strategies; and
- I/O layer does not use library functionality, enabling bare metal applications and safe library subsets.
About LDRA
For more than forty 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 United Kingdom with subsidiaries in the United States and India coupled with an extensive distributor network. For more information on the LDRA tool suite, please visit www.ldra.com.
About Green Hills Software
Founded in 1982, Green Hills Software is the largest independent software vendor for the Internet of Things (IoT). In 2008, the Green Hills INTEGRITY-178 RTOS was the first and only operating system to be certified by NIAP (National Information Assurance Partnership comprised of NSA & NIST) to EAL 6+, High Robustness, the highest level of security ever achieved for any software product. Our open architecture integrated development solutions address deeply embedded, absolute security, and high-reliability applications for the military/avionics, medical, industrial, automotive, networking, consumer, and other markets that demand industry-certified solutions. Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, with European headquarters in the United Kingdom. Visit Green Hills Software at www.ghs.com.
