Verifying Code When Software Reliability Is Critical

http://www.mathworks.com/company/newsletters/news_notes/2008/polyspace.html

First submitted by Linda Webb on 2 Jul 2009

PolySpace products prove the absence of run-time errors without the need to compile and run the code

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Date	Contributor	Description	Rating
2 Jul 2009	Linda Webb	For many embedded software projects, the primary verification goal is to find as many bugs as possible, as quickly as possible. The static analysis tools commonly used for this purpose are good at detecting flaws, but they do not prove that no errors remain in the source code. As a result, these tools do not prevent endless debugging loops and lengthy code-checking procedures. More seriously, they may leave potentially catastrophic defects undetected—unacceptable for applications that require high reliability. PolySpace code verification products provide a different approach—one that proves the absence of errors. To prove the absence of errors, a code verification tool must exhaustively investigate every piece of code and verify its reliability against all possible data values. It must often perform tasks of a mathematical sophistication that exceeds the capabilities of a standard error-detection tool. By Paul Barnard, Marc Lalo, and Jim Tung, The MathWorks This article was published in The MathWorks News & Notes, 2008

2 Jul 2009

Linda Webb

For many embedded software projects, the primary verification goal is to find as many bugs as possible, as quickly as possible. The static analysis tools commonly used for this purpose are good at detecting flaws, but they do not prove that no errors remain in the source code. As a result, these tools do not prevent endless debugging loops and lengthy code-checking procedures. More seriously, they may leave potentially catastrophic defects undetected—unacceptable for applications that require high reliability. PolySpace code verification products provide a different approach—one that proves the absence of errors.
To prove the absence of errors, a code verification tool must exhaustively investigate every piece of code and verify its reliability against all possible data values. It must often perform tasks of a mathematical sophistication that exceeds the capabilities of a standard error-detection tool.

By Paul Barnard, Marc Lalo, and Jim Tung, The MathWorks

This article was published in The MathWorks News & Notes, 2008

Tag Activity

Tag	Applied By	Date/Time
whitepaper	Linda Webb	2 Jul 2009 at 10:24am
verification validation	Linda Webb	2 Jul 2009 at 10:24am
software reliability	Linda Webb	2 Jul 2009 at 10:24am
polyspace	Linda Webb	2 Jul 2009 at 10:24am
paper	Linda Webb	2 Jul 2009 at 10:24am
control design automation	Linda Webb	2 Jul 2009 at 10:24am
code verification	Linda Webb	2 Jul 2009 at 10:24am
automotive	Linda Webb	2 Jul 2009 at 10:24am
article	Linda Webb	2 Jul 2009 at 10:24am
aerospace and defense	Linda Webb	2 Jul 2009 at 10:24am

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