SBIR Phase I: Early Detection of Software and Hardware Flaws by Conformance Checking and Virtual Prototyping

这个小型企业创新研究计划（SBIR）第一阶段项目是设计和开发一个自动一致性检查解决方案，可以快速检测虚拟设备和硬件原型之间的不一致性。计算机和消费电子产品制造商正面临着越来越复杂的硬件设计，以及漫长而艰苦的软件和硬件集成过程。 为了应对紧迫的上市时间，许多制造商在硬件可用之前在虚拟设备上开发软件驱动程序。然而，为了实现早期软件开发的好处，确保虚拟设备和物理设备之间的一致性至关重要，以便在虚拟设备上开发的软件在可用时可以在物理设备上工作。 本项目将研究和设计工具，以帮助发现并向开发人员报告不一致之处，目标是减少测试和开发工作，同时提高产品质量。本项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是提供软件工具，以确保早期软件开发的有效性。 计算机设备制造商瞄准了快速发展的细分市场，如移动的市场，并面临激烈的竞争。为了保持竞争力，制造商渴望采用新技术，如虚拟原型，以实现早期软件开发。一致性检查有助于检测虚拟和物理硬件之间的不一致性，从而有助于缩短产品上市时间。该项目还将使通过一致性检查扩展当前功能集来构建虚拟原型平台的供应商受益。这些特性的增加将使早期软件开发使用虚拟原型的全部力量，并将鼓励更多的用户使用他们的产品。

This Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) Phase I project is to design and develop an automatic conformance checking solution that can quickly detect inconsistencies between virtual devices and hardware prototypes. Computer and consumer electronics manufacturers are facing increasingly complex hardware designs, and lengthy, painstaking software and hardware integration processes. To address tight time-to-market deadlines, many manufacturers develop software drivers over virtual devices before hardware is available. However, to realize the benefits of early software development, it is critical to ensure consistency between the virtual and physical devices, so that software developed over the virtual device will work on the physical device when it becomes available. This project will study and design tools to help discover and report inconsistencies to developers, with the goal of reducing testing and development effort, while improving product quality.The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to provide software tools to ensure the effectiveness of early software development. Computer device manufacturers are targeting fast-evolving segments, such as the mobile market, and face intense competition. To remain competitive, manufacturers are eager to adopt new technologies, such as virtual prototyping, to enable early software development. Conformance checking helps detect the inconsistencies between virtual and physical hardware, and thus helps cut product time-to-market. This project will also benefit vendors that build virtual prototyping platforms by extending the current feature set with conformance checking. The addition of these features will enable the full power of early software development using virtual prototyping, and will encourage more users to use their products.