The power of proof for safety-critical systems
BTC EmbeddedValidator is a tool for formally verifying safety-critical requirements.
In modern embedded development projects, the number of possible value combinations of input signals and calibrations easily explodes towards infinity. Even with a large number of test cases, it becomes impossible to cover all potential paths through the software logic. In other words, one very important question still remains unanswered, even after rigorous testing: “Can my safety requirements be violated?”
BTC EmbeddedValidator uses model checking technology to automatically prove that a given requirement cannot be violated by your software. In other words– there is no combination of input signals and calibration values that could ever drive the system to the unsafe state we’re interested in.
BTC Embedded Systems pioneered integrating model checking technology with commercial software tools. Delivering this highly automated technology to industry professionals helps our customers significantly increase the efficiency and quality of embedded development projects.
The purpose of a model checker is to extensively anlyze the system behavior against a particular temporal property to automatically determine whether or not this property holds. If it does not hold, the model checker returns a concrete counterexample explicitly showing how to violate the corresponding property. As compared to traditional testing, the model checker analyzes all possible runs of the system with the push of a button and delivers complete mathematical proof of the dynamic behavior of the system. The generation of a counterexample distinguishes model checking from other automated anlysis methods such as abstract interpretation.
If EmbeddedValidator does generate a counter-example to show that our system violates our safety requirement, you can use the powerful debugging capabilities of BTC EmbeddedPlatform to automatically create a debug environment and track down the issue.
In developing this workflow, we asked ourselves: what does a good debugging environment look like?
For a model-based development process, the most intuitive environment for debugging is clearly the Simulink model. BTC EmbeddedValidator generates the debug environment as a self-contained sandbox, making it easy to share with colleagues or customers. For a closer look at the behavior on code level, a debug environment can also be exported either as a Microsoft Visual Studio project or a generic debug environment for any other IDE.
BTC EmbeddedPlatform (incl. BTC EmbeddedTester BASE, BTC EmbeddedTester, BTC EmbeddedSpecifier and BTC EmbeddedValidator) has been certified by German TÜV Süd as fit for usage in safety critical software development projects.
The certificate addresses different standards including IEC 61508-3:3010, ISO 26262, EN 50128, IEC 62304 as well as ISO 25119.
For the automotive standard ISO 26262, we have been certified with the highest tool confidence level TCL and the certificate is valid for all ASIL levels including ASIL D.
We provide the certificate and the corresponding report to our customers free of charge upon request, which almost eliminates any effort for tool qualification measures on the customer side.
If you would like to try out our tools, we will gladly provide an evaluation license free of charge. Evaluations include a free launch workshop and also provide an opportunity for you to meet one-on-one with our support and engineering teams.
Do you have any questions or want to see our tools in action? If so, please use the link below to schedule a meeting, where a member of our engineering team will be happy to show you the features and use cases and directly answer any questions you might have.
If you would like to try out our tools, we will gladly provide an evaluation license free of charge. Evaluations include a free launch workshop and also provide an opportunity for you to meet one-on-one with our support and engineering teams.
Do you have any questions or want to see our tools in action? If so, please use the link below to schedule a meeting, where a member of our engineering team will be happy to show you the features and use cases and directly answer any questions you might have.
Wolfgang Meincke
Stuttgart, Germany
Dr. Tino Teige
Oldenburg, Germany
We provide intelligent and automated test solutions which enable our customers to deal with the growing complexity of embedded software while achieving high quality in compliance with the ISO 26262 standard.
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