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The embedded software has played an increasing role in safety-critical systems. At the same time the current development process of “build, then integrate” has proven unaffordable for the Aerospace industry. This paper outlines challenges in safety-critical embedded systems in addressing system-level faults that are currently discovered late in the development life cycle. We then discuss an architecture-centric approach to model-based engineering, i.e., to complement the validation of systems with analysis of different operational quality aspects from an architecture model. A key technology in this approach is the Architecture Analysis & Design Language (AADL), an SAE International standard for embedded software system. It supports analysis of operational qualities such as responsiveness, safety-criticality, security, and reliability through model annotations.

Mission- and safety-critical systems are increasingly reliant on software. However, their development and qualification has become increasingly challenging: increasing size and more coupling between software and hardware layers has driven development cost to unaffordable levels. Mismatched assumptions at the architecture level, impacting quality attributes such as performance, timing, safety, reliability, are the leading causes and are difficult to test for. To cope with these issues, architecture must be established to identify problems earlier in the development process. Architecture-centric modeling technology has led to a model-based virtual system integration approach that permits early discovery of problems (integration, performance, etc.). Despite advances in this area, such technologies have found limited use due to the perceived modeling and analysis cost with limited value.