Certification of Real-time Systems

Abstract

Over the past decade, design engineers have been forced to examine vendors’ quality issues more closely. Mostly hardware has been under consideration, but now, due to the increasing complexity of real-time systems, the same rigid quality constraints must be applied to both the hardware and software selection process. Some examples of both hardware and software standards are given in the subsequent section. Cross certification between hardware and software suppliers is of paramount importance, since system reliability is largely determined by the interaction between components, and not just the individual components. More and more designers today rely on the standard ISO 9000 to ensure that vendors have robust quality programmes in place [22]. An overview of the ISO 900X standards is given later in this chapter. Finally, some technical evaluation standards that describe the way to use standards to evaluate hardware/software systems and provide them with certificates when they comply with the requirements specified are considered.