Software quality assurance provider Coverity has released a new tool that will allow application developers to write more secure code for multithreaded applications.

Multithreaded applications are specifically designed to take advantage of the increasing number of multicore processors available in the market.

A multicore CPU combines two or more independent cores into a single package composed of a single integrated circuit. Last month, a senior Intel executive admitted that while multicore chips will help meet growing computing demands, it could create more challenges for programmers writing code.

This is because as technology develops at a fast rate, developers are being forced to rapidly adapt to programming for multicore systems. Specifically, programmers have to transition from programming for single-core processors to multiple cores, all the while future-proofing the code to keep up-to-date in case additional cores are added to a computing system.

Coverity as a company specializes in detecting coding flaws in C/C++ and Java software, and its new tool, Coverity Thread Analyzer for Java, is touted as a dynamic analysis tool for multithreaded applications.

It says that it can automatically detect concurrency defects that can cause data corruption and application failures.

The tool observes code as it is executed and automatically identifies race conditions and deadlocks. The company say this is unique in the field of dynamic analysis because it "detects not only problems that will occur in limited testing environments, but also problems that have the potential to occur over extended operations in field environments."

Coverity Thread Analyzer can also be used in conjunction with its static analysis tool, Coverity Prevent.

"The continued growth of multicore processors has forced development teams to begin creating multithreaded applications whether they are ready or not," said Michael Monticello, security and risk analyst at analyst group Enterprise Management Associates.

"To successfully eliminate the concurrency defects inherent to multithreaded applications, organizations need sophisticated new tools that pinpoint these hard-to-find issues so developers can focus on bringing secure and reliable new products to market," he added.