Self-verification as the key technology for next generation electronic systems

Most safety critical systems today cannot be completely verified by state-of-the-art verification approaches before their deployment to the real world. The rapidly growing complexity of these systems is amplifying the strong demand of a disruptive innovation in verification technology. In this invited paper, we propose the concept of self-verification - a fundamental change to the way how verification is approached by employing it as a post-deployment process. This enables a new generation of safety critical systems that are capable of verifying themselves. Essential for the realization of this idea is the design of a core system carrying self-verification capacities. We outline a possible architecture of the core system and demonstrate two application scenarios of how self-verification could be realized. The first one targets the verification of evolving systems whereas the second one allows the seamless integration of partially unverified components in safety-critical applications.