You are required to read and agree to the below before accessing a full-text version of an article in the IDE article repository.
The full-text document you are about to access is subject to national and international copyright laws. In most cases (but not necessarily all) the consequence is that personal use is allowed given that the copyright owner is duly acknowledged and respected. All other use (typically) require an explicit permission (often in writing) by the copyright owner.
For the reports in this repository we specifically note that
- the use of articles under IEEE copyright is governed by the IEEE copyright policy (available at http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/rights/copyrightpolicy.html)
- the use of articles under ACM copyright is governed by the ACM copyright policy (available at http://www.acm.org/pubs/copyright_policy/)
- technical reports and other articles issued by M‰lardalen University is free for personal use. For other use, the explicit consent of the authors is required
- in other cases, please contact the copyright owner for detailed information
By accepting I agree to acknowledge and respect the rights of the copyright owner of the document I am about to access.
If you are in doubt, feel free to contact webmaster@ide.mdh.se
Evaluation of Static Time Analysis for Volcano Communications Technologies AB
Publication Type:
Student Thesis
Abstract
Today, small computers are commonly embedded as a part of many different products like mobile telephones,
toys and vehicles and the number of embedded computers, used in modern cars, has increased dramatically
during the past decade. This evolution puts higher requirements on the communication networks that connect
these computerized parts. It is among other things necessary to know exactly how long time each individual task
in a computer system takes to execute and also important to assure that the system operates correctly in a worstcase
scenario. Today, the worst-case execution time (WCET) of industrial applications is usually measured in a
traditional way, called dynamic timing analysis. However, this method requires a lot of time from the system
developer, who cannot guarantee that the worst-case has been found. What most of the software developers
today are missing is an analysis tool that generates WCET estimates for programs statically. This can be
performed by a method called static timing analysis that estimates the WCET of a program, without actually
running it. Instead a WCET analysis tool is used that rely on models of a specific processor and the possible
programs executions. Volcano Communications Technologies AB (VCT) is a company with a current tool chain
for development of real-time communication solutions for embedded network systems, principally used within
the car industry. This report gives an account of a study that has been done to examine if a commercial WCET
analysis tool could be integrated into VCTâs current tool chain. If that would be possible, shorter development
times and overall production costs could be fulfilled. The results show that an integration of a static analysis tool
would be possible but requires a lot of workload and detailed knowledge about the analysed system from the
user. The analysed parts have also been measured in a traditionally way with help of an oscilloscope, and the
results have been compared to see how similar the generated WCETs are. These dynamic timing analyses were
hard to perform and good results were difficult to achieve. On account of insufficient knowledge about the code
and lack of time, the WCETs generated by the two methods were quite unreliable and different for some
complex and static code snippets. The WCETs generated for some simpler and static code snippets were on the
other hand more reliable and similar. The purpose with this study was however not to compare these estimates,
but rather to investigate the possibility of applying a static WCET analysis method on VCTâs code and observe
the difficulties that arise.
Bibtex
@mastersthesis{Byhlin548,
author = {Susanna Byhlin},
title = {Evaluation of Static Time Analysis for Volcano Communications Technologies AB},
month = {December},
year = {2004},
url = {http://www.es.mdu.se/publications/548-}
}