Computer-aided control systems design: Introduction and historical overview

Computer-aided control system design (CACSD) encompasses a broad range of methods, tools, and technologies for system modelling, control system synthesis and tuning, dynamic system analysis and simulation, as well as validation and verification. The domain of CACSD enlarged progressively over decades from simple collections of algorithms and programs for control system analysis and synthesis to comprehensive tool sets and user-friendly environments supporting all aspects of developing and deploying advanced control systems in various application fields. This entry gives a brief introduction to CACSD and reviews the evolution of key concepts and technologies underlying the CACSD domain. Several cornerstone achievements in developing reliable numerical algorithms; implementing robust numerical software; and developing sophisticated integrated modelling, simulation, and design environments are highlighted

The evolution and testing of a medium sized numerical package

We investigate the evolution of a medium sized software package, LAPACK, through its public releases over the last six years and establish a correlation, at a subprogram level, between a simply computable software metric value and the number of coding errors detected in the released routines. We also quantify the code changes made between issues of the package and attempt to categorize the reasons for these changes. We then consider the testing strategy used with LAPACK. Currently this consists of a large number of mainly self-checking driver programs along with sets of configuration files. These suites of test codes run a very large number of test cases and consume significant amounts of cpu time. We attempt to quantify how successful this testing strategy is from the viewpoint of the coverage of the executable statements within the routines being tested