LDRA Delivers ISO 26262 Compliance for Automakers

The ISO/DIS 26262 standard establishes the level of safety risk for a system or system component using four levels (A-D) of Automotive Safety Integrity Levels (ASIL) where Level D represents the highest risk with the most stringent safety requirements. ISO/DIS 26262 translates these safety integrity levels into software-specific objectives that must be satisfied during development. An assigned ASIL therefore determines the level of effort required to show compliance to the standard. It requires greater effort and expense to comply with higher D-level components when producing a system critical to the continued safe operation of an automobile (e.g., a steer-by-wire) than to produce a system with only a minor impact in the case of a failure (e.g., in-car entertainment).

“With the number of recalls plaguing the automotive community, it’s clear that managing the shift from mechanical to software components has proved challenging,” noted Ian Hennell, LDRA Operations Director. “LDRA is strongly committed to providing development teams with tools and process support that ensures they can meet current software quality standards. Our implementation of ISO/DIS 26262 complements our mature solutions for MISRA-C and MISRA-C++ compliance, as well as providing code coverage metrics that ensure each line of code has been fully tested and verified and will not introduce unexpected errors after deployment.”

Reaching beyond simple standards checking, the LDRA tool suite automatically checks compliance to the ISO 26262 standard through all stages of the software development lifecycle. In addition to the usual rule compliance checking, code complexity metrics, code coverage metrics (including statement, branch/decision and MC/DC), dataflow analysis and host/target testing, the LDRA tool suite extends ISO 26262 compliance to run-time error prevention and system requirements traceability down to the processor level. LDRA supports ISO 26262 across the entire software lifecycle from requirements through coding, analysis, and verification. With automated documentation, proof of compliance is included throughout all stages of development.

“Standards compliance hinges fundamentally on good programming practice,” added Hennell. “LDRA is committed to helping the automotive industry achieve quality software that is understandable, testable, maintainable, reliable and validated. Only by integrating these fundamentals into current processes can automakers improve software quality and significantly slash the heavy costs of vehicle recalls and warranty support.”