Series 13 – Episode 3 – Why library qualification is so important for safety-critical applications

Library qualification is key, because code from the library is linked into the application and installed onto the target device.

Beemster is pleased to see many companies in the automotive, industrial, medical, aviation, robotics, and railway industries taking the safety of critical C++ applications seriously. With the latest safety-critical applications handling real-time data from cameras, radars and other sensors, the need for a mature programming language that closely matches the performance of C, while offering a higher level of abstraction, has never been greater. To make full use of C++ you need a qualified C++ library. But how do you qualify that?

The C++ Standard Library is huge and continues to grow with every language update. To qualify the library requires some major design decisions, a lot of hard work and myriad small details to be taken into account.

It is paramount that application engineers can gain visibility of the potential impact any libraries employed within their systems might have on their ability to meet the relevant functional safety requirements (in line with a given automotive ASIL class, for instance). They have to make certain that these libraries, just like their own code, are completely valid for the use case. Furthermore, this must be verified under both normal and abnormal operating conditions.

Beemster goes on to speak about Solid Sand’s SuperGuard and how it solves some of the challenges he mentions as well as offering some advice for application developers when it comes to library qualification.

To hear more about library qualification, and much more, you can listen to Electronic Specifier’s interview with Marcel Beemster on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.