UTC Subsidiary Selects CodePeer Analysis Tool For Software Certification In Airborne Systems

AdaCore’s CodePeer static analysis tool has been adopted by Atlantic Inertial Systems Limited, a UK firm of UTC Aerospace Systems, for usage on its TERPROM digital terrain system for military transport aircraft.

CodePeer automates the review and validation of Ada source code and helps detect potential errors early in development.

As a qualified tool that automates several verification activities, CodePeer will facilitate UTC Aerospace Systems’ DO-178B certification of the TERPROM terrain referenced navigation software–the software that allows the TERPROM system to provide precise, reliable and predictive ground proximity warnings.

The CodePeer tool is sound; that is, it does not report false negatives. If CodePeer’s analysis of a program module reports no errors of a given type, then no errors are present. The static analysis tool reduces the need for manual code review, provides deep insight into potential issues, and automates parts of the DO-178B verification process for the certification of software in airborne systems. According to Hugh Williams, engineering director at UTC Aerospace Systems in Plymouth, “this analysis tool should help improve computational accuracy and verify that code is free of certain categories of run-time errors such as buffer overflows, floating point underflows and overflows, integer overflows and references to uninitialized variables.”

“Sound static analyzers allow code reviews to be significantly more effective and less time consuming than traditional manual methods,” said Cyrille Comar, AdaCore President and a member of the SC205 (DO-178C) Working Group . “This automation is a major new trend in the verification of critical software, and we are pleased to lend our support by qualifying CodePeer for our avionics customers”.