High-Integrity Software for Automotive Applications

This paper reviews some possible techniques for the future development of high-integrity, high-reliability software for use in critical applications in road vehicles. The customer is concerned with the overall reliability of electronic equipment in a vehicle. High reliability requires designers both to minimize the possibilities of random failures and to reduce or eliminate systematic design errors. Following a discussion of some ways in which microprocessor-based equipment can fail, formal techniques of specification and analysis are identified as possible methods for the automotive industries in the next decade. Combined with exhaustive dynamic testing and static analysis of programs, it should be possible to reduce the probability of failure in equipment based on the use of programmable microcontrollers.