The effect of real-time software reuse in FPGAs and microcontrollers with respect to software faults

Reuse is considered as an important aspect in software design, but certain challenges have to be met if software reuse is applied in embedded systems. In these systems, specific requirements, as for example safety or real-time requirements, have to be considered, which typically complicate the reuse of software. Moreover, a large variety of hardware platforms is present in embedded systems. Those hardware platforms have different properties, which might affect the reuse of the corresponding software. In this paper, the different impacts of microcontrollers and FPGAs on software reuse are considered by empirical investigations. In particular, the investigations focus on the effect of this reuse on faults in real-time software. As a result, different benefits and drawbacks of software reuse were identified for microcontrollers and FPGAs.