Software Debugging Advances to be Explored at UK Conference

With ever more complicated software and higher consumer expectations, software debug and code analysis tools have become essential for the commercial development of electronics systems.

The UK Device Developers' Conference is a one-day conference for developers of intelligent systems and devices, taking place in Bristol (14th May), Cambridge (16th May) and Manchester (22nd May). The conference will offer engineers and embedded computing professionals a packed agenda of technical workshops, presentations and a tabletop exhibition of some of the worlds leading vendors.

As software integrity is such a major issue in the engineering sector, the event will feature a ½ day workshop on Advanced Debugging Techniques and also a presentation on Choosing The Right Tools . There will also be a number of important vendors of debugging tools and code analysis tools available for discussion within the exhibition. These will include German hardware assisted debug tool company Lauterbach, Dutch JTAG debug tool company JTAG Technologies and code analysis and compliance tools experts LDRA and Programming Research.

If you think about millions of cars being recalled because of a software bug, then its easy to understand the commercial risk of a software bug in this day and age, said Barry Lock, UK Manager of Lauterbach. In fact, it's not just the colossal cost of a recall, it is also the long term damage to the brand. In this respect, powerful debug tools are now a commercial necessity. Even in non- critical projects, good debug tools will help engineers develop products that perform well in the marketplace, whilst also accelerating the development phase.

Engineers and developers will also have the opportunity to attend a 1/2-day workshop on a new coding standard called MISRA C:2012 . MISRA (The Motor Industry Software Reliability Association) originally produced MISRA C, a set of guidelines to aid the development of safety related systems in C in the automotive world. Since then, MISRA C has been adopted by the wider embedded systems community and has become the dominant, international coding guidelines for the use of C in critical systems.

There will be a lot of knowledge at this event, said Richard Blackburn, Event Organiser. This will be a chance for engineers to get up to date and explore new technologies and trends in the industry. Whether it's hardware, software, enclosure or test, I think they will find this a very useful event.

Sponsored by key industry tool and technology vendors, the Device Developers' Conference is free to engineers and managers working in the technical sector.

A key feature of the Device Developers' Conference is that it is a single day event, which takes place in three locations. This enables engineers to attend with the minimal of travel time and expense. Another key feature is the ½-day technology workshop schedule that enables engineers to receive hands-on training from industry experts.

Presentation titles include ‘Managing The Commercial Use of Linux’ and ‘Developing Device Drivers for Embedded Systems’.