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EMBEDDED
Functional embedded software testing for safety-critical systems must verify more than the code. It must also validate the interactions between components, including the APIs, services, and messages that determine whether the system behaves safely and reliably in the field. Parasoft tests both, across every standard that governs your industry.
Embedded software no longer runs in isolation. A modern vehicle, aircraft, infusion pump, or factory controller is a network of components exchanging messages over service-oriented architectures and message buses, often updated over the air long after it ships. Quality depends as much on how those components communicate as on how each one computes.
Parasoft tests both with one automated platform. C/C++test and C/C++test CT handle code-level verification—static analysis, unit testing, structural coverage, and certification evidence. SOAtest and Virtualize extend that rigor to integration testing—the APIs, services, and dependencies between components. DTP ties it together with traceability and audit-ready reporting.
DIFFERENTIATOR
Code-level verification is essential. But a safety-critical system is more than its units. The defects that ground aircraft, recall vehicles, and trigger device field actions increasingly live in the interfaces and the messaging between components.
A braking ECU that passes every unit test can still misbehave when a dependent controller sends a malformed message at the wrong moment. A monitor that’s flawless on the bench can fail when the connected system it relies on times out.
Standards know this, which is why they mandate integration testing, interface testing, and robustness testing against abnormal inputs (DO-178C §6.4.2.2; ISO 26262 fault injection; IEC 61508 Annex tables).
To satisfy them, you have to drive the connections, not just the code.
To test how a component behaves across an interface, the thing on the other end has to be present and controllable enough to drive into the conditions the test demands. In safety-critical development, here’s what typically stands in the way.
Still being built by another team or another supplier. Waiting stalls verification until late, when defects cost the most.
HIL rigs, target boards, and certified test benches are limited, costly, and shared—stifling continuous testing.
A handful of test rigs and a queue of engineers and CI jobs means contention, scheduling conflicts, and tests that can’t run in parallel.
Standards demand robustness and fault-injection—abnormal ranges, dropped messages, out-of-bounds conditions. You can’t reliably drive a real braking ECU or pump into those states on a bench, safely or repeatably.
Model lines, trim and feature tiers, regional and subscription configurations—each combination to verify, often with options you can’t physically access. Restanding up real environments for every variant doesn’t scale.
Virtualize simulates the behavior, responses, and protocols of the components your system talks to. It’s available on demand, controllable down to the message, and safe to push into any fault condition the standard requires.
Shift testing left. Teams exercise the mandated abnormal and boundary conditions on demand, and every engineer and pipeline has its own isolated environment. Stop waiting on hardware that’s scarce, unfinished, or unsafe to break.
The connected layer is tested as rigorously as the code, which is the only way the system is actually verified.
Standards demand techniques and rigorous evidence. Parasoft delivers both.
Static analysis, unit testing, and structural coverage—up to MC/DC and object code coverage where DO-178C Level A requires it. Collected across host and target.
TÜV SÜD-certified analysis and test tools, automated tool qualification kits, and reports that satisfy the documentation and traceability the certification process expects.
Standards
Industry
Software-defined vehicles have collapsed dozens of ECUs into zonal architectures with service-oriented, Ethernet networks. Teams must hit ASIL-graded structural coverage—up to MC/DC at ASIL D—and validate the service-oriented, AUTOSAR-based messaging (including SOME/IP) between ECUs, often before all dependencies physically exist.
C/C++test and C/C++test CT deliver static analysis, unit testing, MISRA/AUTOSAR C++14 conformance, and coverage. SOAtest and Virtualize validate SOME/IP messaging and virtualize unavailable ECU dependencies with built-in robustness testing. TÜV SÜD-certified tooling and DTP traceability generate ISO 26262 evidence you need.
Standards
Industry
DO-178C sets the strictest bar in any industry. At Level A, structural coverage extends past MC/DC to object/assembly code, robustness testing is mandatory, and software is never certified standalone—only as part of the airborne system, through a DER. Target environments are scarce, and certified test time is expensive.
C/C++test with ASMTools automates object/assembly code coverage—a Level A requirement with no other equivalent. DO-330 Qualification Kits automate tool-qualification evidence (TQL-1–5). SOAtest drives the interface and robustness tests, while Virtualize stands in for dependent LRUs and buses, so integration testing doesn’t wait on hardware. DTP centralizes the traceability and audit evidence.
Standards
Industry
Medical rigor is risk-driven, not coverage-driven. There’s no prescribed coverage table. Assurance flows from ISO 14971 risk controls. Teams must manage software of unknown provenance (SOUP), and they can’t drive a real device into hazardous fault states on a bench. Yet that’s exactly what risk control requires them to verify. Connected devices add HL7/FHIR and cloud messaging to the test surface.
C/C++test enforces secure coding (MISRA, CERT, CWE) with bidirectional traceability that links tests and coverage back to ISO 14971 risk controls. SOAtest and Virtualize test connected device messaging and simulate dependent systems and fault conditions that can’t be reproduced safely on hardware. DTP centralizes the traceability that backs FDA software validation evidence.
Standards
Industry
SIL is defined by the probability of dangerous failure, and structural coverage rigor climbs with it—up to MC/DC at SIL 4, per IEC 61508-3 Annex B. Controllers run for decades on live plant networks that can’t simply be taken offline or forced into fault states for testing—and field devices are often unavailable during development.
C/C++test maps directly to IEC 61508-3 Annex A/B techniques required per SIL, with TÜV SÜD-certified static analysis, unit testing, and coverage. SOAtest drives functional tests over connected protocols such as MQTT, while Virtualize simulates field device and plant dependencies so integration and fault testing run without disrupting live systems. DTP supplies SIL traceability.
Standards
Industry
Rail software carries SIL-graded rigor with long, cross-border certification cycles and scarce, costly certified test environments. Signaling and control components must be verified together, but the dependent subsystems and trackside equipment are rarely all available at once.
C/C++test is TÜV SÜD-certified for EN 50128/EN 50716, delivering the static analysis, unit testing, and coverage the SILs require. SOAtest and Virtualize drive and simulate dependent subsystems so integration testing starts early. DTP generates the traceability and audit evidence for cross-acceptance.
WHY PARASOFT
Code-level verification with C/C++test and C/C++test CT. Integration-level verification with SOAtest and Virtualize. All in a single, unified toolchain. No stitching point tools together across the unit-to-system gap.
C/C++test and C/C++test CT are TÜV SÜD-certified for functional safety across IEC 61508, IEC 62304, EN 50128/EN 50716, and ISO 26262 from host and target with qualification kits that automate DO-178C/DO-330 and ISO 26262 tool qualification evidence.
Virtualize removes scarce, unfinished, and unsafe-to-break dependencies as a constraint. Shift testing left, and make the mandated robustness and fault conditions reproducible on demand.
DTP centralizes bidirectional requirements traceability, coverage, and compliance reporting. The evidence assembles itself as you test.
Continuous testing across host and target, integrated with the embedded toolchains and ALM systems that your teams already use.
C/C++test
C/C++test CT
Virtualize
SOAtest
DTP