HILT 2014             ACM logo - Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession

High Integrity Language Technology
ACM SIGAda’s Annual International Conference

Invited Presentation:
AADL and Model-Based Engineering

Peter Feiler

Abstract

Mission and safety critical software-reliant systems, aka. Cyber-physical systems, face the increasing challenges of exponential increase in verification related software rework cost. Industry studies show that 70% of defects are introduced in requirements and architecture design, while 80% are discovered post-unit test. The Architecture Analysis & Design Language (AADL) standard was targeted to address these issues through virtual system integration to analytically discover these system level issues regarding operational system properties early in the life cycle.

After a summary of the challenges, the presentation highlights the expressive, analytical, and auto-generation capabilities of the AADL core language as well as several of its standardized extensions. The presentation then illustrates the importance of the analytical virtual system integration capabilities on several realistic industrial examples. In this context we discuss the benefit of well-defined semantics of nominal and fault behavior, timing, semantics of the model in AADL over other MBD notations.

The presentation concludes by outlining a four part improvement strategy: architecture-led requirement specification to improve the quality of requirements, architecture refinement and incremental virtual system integration to discover issues early, compositional verification through static analysis to address scalability, and incremental verification and testing throughout the life cycle as assurance evidence.


Created on 14 October 2014;  website comments and corrections to ClydeRoby at ACM.Org