The Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) is an organization that produces guidelines for the software developed for electronic components used in the

automotive industry The automotive industry comprises a wide range of company, companies and organizations involved in the design, Business development, development, manufacturing, marketing, selling, Maintenance, repairing, and Custom car, modification of motor ve ...

. It is a collaboration between numerous vehicle manufacturers, component suppliers and engineering consultancies.

Aim

The aim of this organization is to provide advice in questions of

quality assurance Quality assurance (QA) is the term used in both manufacturing and service industries to describe the systematic efforts taken to assure that the product(s) delivered to customer(s) meet with the contractual and other agreed upon performance, design ...

mainly to the automotive industry for the creation and application of safe, reliable software within vehicles. 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"''. The safety requirements of the software used in control units of Automobiles is specific as compared to that of other industries and devices. MISRA creates, reviews and publishes (sells) standards, such as the

MISRA C MISRA C is a set of software development guidelines for the C (programming language), C programming language developed by Motor Industry Software Reliability Association, The MISRA Consortium. Its aims are to facilitate code safety, Computer secur ...

Coding Standard for the C programming language, first published in 1998.

History

MISRA was formed in the 1990s by a consortium of organizations formed in response to the ''UK Safety Critical Systems Research Programme''. This program was supported by the Department of Trade and Industry and the

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a British UK Research Councils, Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical scienc ...

. Another program was "SafeIT". Subsequently MISRA published its first guide, ''"Development guidelines for vehicle based software"'', which is considered a foundational element of

functional safety Functional safety is the part of the overall safety of a system or piece of equipment that depends on automatic protection operating correctly in response to its inputs or failure in a predictable manner (fail-safe). The automatic protection system ...

by the engineering community. This was roughly ten years before the creation of the

ISO 26262 ISO 26262, titled "Road vehicles – Functional safety", is an international standard for functional safety of electrical and/or electronic systems that are installed in serial production road vehicles (excluding mopeds), defined by the Intern ...

standard.

Organization (MISRA Consortium)

Since 2021, MISRA is managed by the MISRA Consortium Limited, an independent not-for-profit entity. The Steering Committee is as follows (2024).

Steering Committee

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Diesel Systems *

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Ltd * HORIBA

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Ltd * Peter Jesty Consulting Ltd * Ricardo plc *

Visteon Visteon Corporation (VC) is an American global automotive electronics supplier based in Van Buren Township, Michigan. Visteon designs, engineers, and manufactures vehicle cockpit electronics products, connected car services and electrification p ...

Engineering Services Ltd * ZF (and former TRW, which was acquired by ZF) Former members are:

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Ltd

Activities

According to MISRA, the following activities are pursued: * MISRA Autocode * MISRA C * MISRA C++ * MISRA Safety Argument * Functional Safety

Guidelines

MISRA guidelines are a set of development guidelines to ensure safe and reliable development of control software for electronic control units (ECUs). The primary focus of the MISRA guidelines is error prevention, not

programming style Programming style, also known as coding style, are the conventions and patterns used in writing source code, resulting in a consistent and readable codebase. These conventions often encompass aspects such as indentation, naming conventions, cap ...

. Among other things, the guidelines are intended to guide and support the following objectives *Ensure safety *Ensure security *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 The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...

, BSI, RTCA), the MISRA guideline documents are not free to users or implementers.

Coding guidelines

MISRA guidelines are primarily focused and derived for the C and C++ programming languages. The main standard is known as "MISRA C" and has been updated several times.

Weblinks

References

{{Authority control Automobile associations in the United Kingdom Computer science institutes in the United Kingdom Computer standards Hinckley and Bosworth Organisations based in Leicestershire Science and technology in Leicestershire Software design Standards organisations in the United Kingdom Technical specifications

Aim