AbsInt provides advanced development tools for embedded systems, and tools for validation, verification and certification of safety-critical software.
Background and mission
The embedded market of today is characterized by constantly rising software complexity and increasingly shorter time-to-market. The share of safety-critical applications is rising.
AbsInt’s tools are designed to
- Enhance software safety
- Speed up time-to-market
- Lower testing and validation costs
- Improve software efficiency to reduce system costs for embedded, real-time, safety-critical applications
Our tools are based on a generic and generative framework which allows an extremely quick, sound and flexible response to customer needs. This has been more than proven in a long series of successful research projects and by outstanding customer satisfaction.
Two-minute introduction on YouTube
| Selected partners |
|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Analysis and verification tools
Software testing accounts for a major part of development costs. This is especially true for real-time systems, where correctness depends not just on logical correctness, but also on the timeliness of the results. Timing properties are hard to establish; measuring and time-stopping methods are error-prone and time-consuming.
Static program analyses provide means to reduce testing and validation costs. The underlying theory of abstract interpretation enables the systematic derivation of provably correct analyses. The analyses are performed at compile time and are sound: they provide results that hold for any program execution and any possible input scenario.
Timing validation for real-time software
Our award-winning aiT WCET Analyzer is the first software tool for verifying that safety-critical applications always react fast enough. Since 2002, aiT is used by Airbus France for validating the timing behavior of critical avionics software.
Proving the absence of stack overflow
Our StackAnalyzer automatically computes the worst-case stack usage of the tasks in embedded applications. This reduces development effort and helps prevent runtime errors due to stack overflow.
Proving the absence of runtime errors
Our static analyzer Astrée, developed under license from CNRS/ENS, proves the absence of runtime errors in C and C++ programs. Its extremely precise and highly customizable analysis engine enables finding all potential runtime errors while keeping false alarms to a minimum. Even large-scale industrial safety-critical software can be analyzed in just a few hours with zero false alarms.
Certification and qualification
Current safety standards such as ISO 26262, DO-178B/C, IEC-61508, EN-50125 and others require identifying potential functional and non-functional hazards and demonstrating that the software does not violate the relevant safety goals.
Abstract-interpretation based tools such as aiT, StackAnalyzer, and Astrée provide formal verification with 100% complete and reliable results. They are therefore perfectly suited to be used for certification.
The qualification process is greatly simplified by our Qualification Support Kits.
Quick facts about AbsInt
Founded in 1998, we are a privately-held company with currently a 40-strong staff from four nations, all located at our headquarters in Saarbruecken, Germany. Our customers come from 40+ countries all over the world, including the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and almost all member states of the EU. We have distribution agreements with major software distributors in Asia, North America, Middle East, and throughout Europe.
The company name is an acronym for “abstract interpretation”, a sophisticated approach to static program analysis formalized by Patrick and Radhia Cousot at the Laboratoire d’Informatique, Grenoble in 1977. It is by implementing this approach that we were able to develop our unique and highly successful products.