Cut Your Certification Time and Costs Using Simulation

Simulation can be a powerful tool for any embedded project. For safety certification, simulation can be a schedule and budget saver. 

Ask anyone who’s been down the road before: certifying an aircraft or vehicle to a safety standard, such as DO-178C or ISO 26262, takes time and money. While there’s no way around it, there’s also no reason to not take every opportunity to minimize risk, cost, and time. Tell me how, you might ask (if you skipped reading the title). Simulation tools are one direct way to set up your cert project for success.

Get Your Code in Shape

Simulation tools can be used throughout the SDLC, from platform and app development, prototyping, integration testing, deployment, and maintenance. Simulation helps you find bugs faster, improve code quality and security, and reduce development time. These all contribute direct returns to your safety certification project.

So don’t wait, fire up your cert engine at the start of your project. Integrate it with your DevSecOps platform. Get creative, debug to your heart’s content without waiting for hardware availability, whether you have no hardware, not enough to go around, or not enough for the kind of pre-cert testing you need to do. Change configurations without fear of impacting your teammate’s workbench. Do it all now, when it’s less expensive, before you start to test on the actual hardware that you’ll need to for certification.

Take advantage of unique capabilities that only simulation can offer. Improve debugging by running your code in reverse to find that nagging bug, fix it in place, then immediately test your fix. Safely and repeatably inject faults to fuzz your system without fear of damaging your hardware, or pen test with concern of exposing your system to external threats. (Take a deep dive into using simulation for cybersecurity testing.) Confidently put your fault handlers through the wringer.

Get the whole team involved – collaborate among cross-functional teams, across locations or regions, all without needing to acquire additional expensive test hardware. Automate your test harness and script your most challenging test conditions. Scale your testing – processor, SoC, subsystem, even full system test. Get your code ready for certification while the costs are lower, the resources seemingly infinite, and the test runs can be parallelized. 

Want to learn more about accelerating your DevOps function with simulation? Or reach out and we’d be happy to dive into the specifics for your program.