Re:Toyota's killer firmware: Bad design and its consequences...
by imglorp on Sunday April 26, 2015 @12:52PM
(#9442346)
Well, for one thing, every instance of mission critical hardware needs a full test, because hardware is messy and stuff happens. You wouldn't want someone hurt because a gate on a chip got a stuck-at fault or one of your vendors had a little extra variation etc etc.
Software only needs testing when the tools or inputs change. So design for testability of software is driven by the needs of a development group (eg simulators, debug statements), while hardware (at a minimum) is aimed at a post production group (eg JTAG, test fixtures).
I agree there are many parallels, but I think the culture is different.
I'm confused by this statement. Substitute say ASME for CMMI and the rest of this sounds like good engineering practices in general. What, for example, about "hardware culture" is orthogonal to testability?