A blue screen in Windows 8, the red circle the death of the Xbox 360 or apps that make mistake in mobile devices are some of the problems that end with the life of the equipment, which could be avoided if the market before launching its operation is found. In order to change this paradigm, a Mexican researcher designed a program to evaluate and ensure the effectiveness of any software and hardware, with fewer tests, in order to achieve a product free of errors.
José Torres Jimenez, researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the IPN, Unit Tamaulipas, created a reservoir of digital information covering arrays, mathematical objects that allow the fewer tests and ensure coverage of the functionality of components software and hardware. Its effectiveness ensures the detection of almost one hundred percent of the errors, achieving better products.
For example, in designing computer software should be tested on different computers, operating systems, processors and other options configuration, to ensure their effectiveness.
The Mexican explained that a covering array is an array (like a spreadsheet) the rows represent one experiment and each column a variable control. This interpretation allows covering arrays are applied to any area of science, such as physics, mathematics, medicine or chemistry.
The covering arrays, designed by Doctor in Computer Science, have the particularity to indicate with great accuracy the required number of tests to perform, with respect to a comprehensive (tasting all configurations). You can drop below the test up to 99 percent, which achieves savings in time, effort, cost and ensuring the functionality of the products.
The ten years of preparation to develop different covering arrays will They opened the doors investigator Cinvestav Tamaulipas to receive an invitation from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Washington DC, USA and make a research stay.
His stay in the capital of the neighboring country not only gave him access to work with super computers running tens of thousands of microprocessor cores simultaneously, but there is also interest from NIST to apply the covering arrays of Mexico to test the effectiveness of both hardware and software agencies of the US government.
Also, the guest in the division of mathematics and computer science professor NIST said such tests should be made by all software companies to avoid failures and side effects caused by malfunction, but now many companies are not applying the covering arrays to improve their development processes.
On the other hand, before leaving for Washington DC, Dr. Torres Jimenez made the transfer program computing the company Svam International (which is dedicated to developing products and services in information technologies), the so-called “SvamCA” generates covering arrays, to the extent and has allowed the company to improve their software development processes.
By using this system, control variables are determined, the values of each factor and the desired degree of coverage is decided, such as processors or computer equipment. With this information the covering array is obtained, testing, after analysis, the results are verified and corrected errors are made. The security functionality can be obtained near 100 percent.
While working NIST researcher Cinvestav has collaborations in downtown Vienna Austria Business Security at Arizona State University and Popayan University of Cauca in Colombia, these collaborations have extended the work to promote and encourage the use of covering arrays.
Moreover, all created by Torres Jimenez systems are freely available and can be downloaded repository that keeps the Cinvestav Tamaulipas. This aims to promote use and receive feedback which has improved versions of its arrays covering. But his short-term goal is that software companies which employ to achieve a better quality product and high functionality. (Agency ID)
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