The researchers this week said they can prove mathematically that code they have developed, designed to govern the safety and security of systems in aircraft and motor vehicles, is free of many classes of error.

Nicta principal researcher Gerwin Klein, who leads the formal verification research team,North Face Shoes Cheap, said in a statement that previous research had concentrated on giving proofs for specific system properties.

The intellectual property generated by the Nicta research will be handed over to Open Kernel Labs, a Nicta spinoff firm, for further development. The research took four years, and was conducted by 12 Nicta researchers, in conjunction with the University of New South Wales.

Paulson added that teams in Europe had also made breakthroughs in the formal verification of computer systems,Discount North Face Trousers, giving the German Verisoft project as an example.

While rigorously testing high-quality code is expensive, said Paulson, developing such tests and operating systems for specialized purposes would have the secondary effect of improving software in general.

Researchers prove kernel is secure

Australian researchers have demonstrated a way to prove core software for mission-critical systems is safe.

Australia’s Information and Communications Technology Centre of Excellence (Nicta), a private-sector research organization, this week announced the completion of the first formal machine-checked proof of a general-purpose operating-system kernel. The kernel is called the secure embedded L4 (seL4) microkernel.

Lawrence Paulson, professor of computational logic at Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratory, who developed the Isabelle generic proof assistant Nicta modified to check its kernel, told ZDNet UK that the microkernel breakthrough would have a trickle-down effect for businesses.