Systematic Reuse of Safety-Critical Components will usher new age of Embedded Software Development

摘要

Over the past several years, the use of safety-critical software - software with real-time, safety-critical processing and deterministic behavior requirements whose failure may cause injury or death to human beings - has proliferated dramatically beyond avionics flight systems. Examples include industrial control, nuclear and medical applications. Software in these applications must of course meet exceptionally stringent standards of quality, the best known of which is D0-178B. The growing volume of this software is threatening to create a workload that is overwhelming for developers and regulators alike, so organisations such as the FAA have been looking for approaches to simplify accreditation, whilst at the same time maintaining their exacting standards. FAA reusable software component (RSC) acceptance promises to create a major shift in how software code is reused in safety-critical embedded software systems and has far-reaching implications across the entire embedded software industry. These guidelines were documented and released in December 2004 in the Advisory Circular (AC) 20-148, providing the approach and documentation necessary for systematic reuse of software components that meet RTCA/D0-178B.