LDRA Assures mission-critical systems

LDRA, a provider of automated software verification, source code analysis, test tools and consultancy services, announced LDRA tool suite support for NXP’s S32K3 family of automotive and industrial microcontrollers, Targeted at automotive body electronics, battery management systems and emerging zonal and domain control ECUs. The LDRA tool suite, together with the NXP S32 Design Studio IDE, helps reduce the cost and effort associated with developing, testing, and certifying software that runs on S32K3 MCUs.

Vehicle ECU content continues to grow driven by demand for new in-car features and the migration from distributed to domain and zonal based architectures. Consequently, software content is increasing in scale and complexity in even modest applications such as lighting, HVAC and access control. The use of over-the-air (OTA) update mechanisms to upgrade ECU firmware and to deploy new features and services further heightens the need for software integrity and interoperability.

“These innovations are exciting but present new challenges most notably in the area of cybersecurity,”said Ian Hennell, operations director, LDRA. “The S32K3 MCU’s extensive security features combined with LDRA tool suite and S32 Design Studio IDE, simplifies source code static and dynamic analysis; improves code quality, functional safety, and security; helping to reduce costs at every stage.”

Delivering safe, secure software with reduced development cost

The LDRA tool suite helps ensure that quality is a fundamental component of the software development life-cycle. Its software standards compliance, testing, and verification tools are based on industry best practices for developing functional safety- and security-critical products of the highest quality. The LDRA tools suite’s open and extensible platform is unique in its integration of software life-cycle traceability, static and dynamic analysis, unit test, and system-level testing on virtually any host or target platform.

Specifically, the LDRA tool suite offers:

• Compliance with coding standards (industry- and user-defined) such as MISRA and CERT
• Automated test case, harness, and stub generation for robustness testing
• Automatic production of software certification and approval evidence
• LDRA’s ISO 9001:2015 certified Quality Management System, and the LDRA tool suite’s TÜV SÜD and SGS-TÜV Saar certifications
• Support for and compliance with ISO 26262 up to ASIL D, ISO/SAE 21434, ASPICE

“Automotive software requirements are rapidly evolving and the S32K3 MCU family and its software package provide a safe and secure starting point for reducing cost and complexity,” said Ed Sarrat, director of product management, Automotive Processing, at NXP. “Central to this is the need for robust, standards-compliant code and the extensive capabilities of the LDRA tool suite provide developers with a platform to deliver this.’