Making Embedded Testing Sustainable with Unit Tests

Flaky target tests are probably one of the leading causes of repetitive test runs on hardware, resulting in significant energy consumption and developer dissatisfaction. In contrast, well-designed unit tests help us catch bugs in a sustainable way because they fail deterministically.

Deterministic unit tests contribute to more sustainable product development, both by enabling scalable feature development and by reducing energy usage. They also reduce the need for elaborate lab setups with complex hardware configurations and associated cooling systems.

In this talk, I will discuss how unit tests have helped me and my team reduce dependencies on hardware by designing firmware that can be tested deterministically without relying on complex lab setups.