Ithaca, New York — GrammaTech’s contributions to ensuring the reliability of critical software at NASA were recently highlighted in the 2011 issue of NASA Spinoff magazine. The article, “Tools Ensure Reliability of Critical Software” (PDF), discusses the partnership between NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and GrammaTech in adapting CodeSonar, GrammaTech’s existing software analysis tool, to include verification of The Power of 10: Rules for Developing Safety Critical Code. Developed by Gerard Holzmann, director of NASA/JPL’s Laboratory of Reliable Software (LaRS), the Power of 10 coding standard is designed to reduce risk and provide more consistency in critical software development, helping to make computer systems safer and more reliable.
CodeSonar is a sophisticated static-analysis tool that performs a whole-program, interprocedural analysis on C/C++ code and identifies complex programming bugs that can result in system crashes, memory corruption, concurrency errors and other serious problems. CodeSonar has been used by NASA on a wide variety of applications, including the Mars Curiosity Rover, satellites, and ground stations.
Published annually, NASA’s Spinoff Magazine highlights the many ways NASA translates its air and space missions into ” societal benefits for people everywhere.” GrammaTech Senior Scientist, Michael McDougall, cited in the NASA Spinoff article, discusses the GrammaTech JPL partnership, the enhancements to CodeSonar to include the Power of 10 checks, and the expanded use of the tool in companies outside the safety-critical space including organizations developing software for wireless devices, networking equipment and consumer electronics.
View the magazine online here: www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/Spinoff2011.
About GrammaTech:
GrammaTech’s static-analysis tools are used worldwide by startups, Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. The staff includes fourteen researchers with PhDs in programming languages and program analysis.
