The C programming language powers the backbone of the IT industry, from critical infrastructures to embedded devices, because the language is efficient, sits close to the operating system and offers a transparent view of the hardware; something that is lost in most modern languages.
Solid Sand’s SuperTest is used by developers around the globe to ensure that their compiler is compliant to the C and C++ standards and is used by software programmers developing safety critical applications in automotive, rail and industrial domains. These programmers need to have confidence that the compiler can be trusted. An alternative is manually verifying the generated assembly code. That is common practice, even today, but extremely labour intensive.
CEA List has been developing a wide range of C program analysis tools, among them, Frama-C which is a static analysis tool, one of the few to satisfy the Ockham criteria for sound analysis tools.
By working together Solid Sands will be able to use Frama-C to obtain a closer look of the inside of the compiler and library implementations, while CEA List will look to use SuperTest to enhance the compliance of its analysis tools.
“CEA List has been dedicating its research to providing trusted software for twenty years. Together with Solid Sands, we can enhance software trust, while pushing the boundaries of our software analysis capabilities,” said Florent Kirchner, Head of Department at CEA List.
“On the one side you have this pragmatic, engineering oriented programming language C. On the other side is the desire to give a mathematical underpinning to our programs. These are hard to match, but they come together in Frama-C. SuperTest is the best test suite for black box testing of the C implementation, and with Frama-C we can also look inside the box,” said Marcel Beemster, founder and CTO of Solid Sands.
