Motor Industry Software Reliability Association

Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) is an organization that produces guidelines for the software developed for electronic components used in the automotive industry.^[1] It is a collaboration between vehicle manufacturers, component suppliers and engineering consultancies.

Aim

The aim of this organization is to provide important advice to the automotive industry for the creation and application of safe, reliable software within vehicles. The safety requirements of the software used in Automobiles is different from that of other areas such as healthcare, industrial automation, aerospace etc. The mission statement of MISRA is "To provide assistance to the automotive industry in the application and creation within vehicle systems of safe and reliable software".^[1]

Formation

MISRA was formed by a consortium of organizations formed in response to the UK Safety Critical Systems Research Programme. This programme was supported by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

MISRA Consortium

The MISRA steering committee constitutes the following organizations.

• AB Automotive Electronics Ltd
• Ford Motor Company Ltd
• Jaguar Cars Ltd
• Lotus Engineering
• MIRA Ltd
• Ricardo UK Ltd
• TRW Automotive Electronics
• The University of Leeds
• Visteon

The committee mainly includes vehicle manufacturers and component suppliers.

Guidelines

MISRA guidelines are the development guidelines for vehicle based software. The guidelines are intended to achieve the following.

• Ensure safety
• Bring in robustness, reliability to the software.
• Human safety must take precedence when in conflict with security of property.
• Consider both random and systematic faults in system design.
• Demonstrate robustness, not just rely on the absence of failures.
• Application of safety considerations across the design, manufacture, operation, servicing and disposal of products.

As with many standards (for example, ISO, BSI, RTCA), the MISRA guideline documents are not free to users or implementers.^[2]

Other languages

Currently MISRA guidelines are produced for MISRA C version of C and C++ programming languages only. MISRA C++ was launched on March 2008. MISRA C was updated in 2013 and is known as MISRA C:2012.^[3]

See also

• MISRA C
• High Integrity C++

References

1. http://www.misra.org.uk The MISRA web site.
2. "Buying MISRA C". http://www.misra.org.uk. Retrieved 11 September 2013. External link in |publisher= (help)
3. MISRA C web site

External links

• Official website MISRA C
• Official website MISRA C++