Timing Analysis for Time-predictable Architectures

Download or read book Timing Analysis for Time-predictable Architectures written by Amine Naji and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the rising complexity of the underlying computer hardware, the analysis of the timing behavior of real-time software is becoming more and more complex and imprecise. Time-predictable computer architectures thus have been proposed to provide hardware support for timing analysis. The goal is to deliver tighter worst-case execution time (WCET) estimates while keeping the analysis overhead minimal. These estimates are typically provided by standalone WCET analysis tools. The emergence of time-predictable architectures is, however, quite recent. While several designs have been introduced, efforts are still needed to assess their effectiveness in actually enhancing the worst-case performance. For many time-predictable hardware, timing analysis is either non-existing or lacking proper support. Consequently, time-predictable architectures are barely supported in existing WCET analysis tools. The general contribution of this thesis is to help filling this gap and turning some opportunities into concrete advantages. For this, we take interest in the Patmos processor. The already existing support around Patmos allows for an effective exploration of techniques to enhance the worst-case performance. Main contributions include: (1) Handling of predicated execution in timing analysis, (2) Comparison of the precision of stack cache occupancy analyses, (3) Analysis of preemption costs for the stack cache, (4) Preemption mechanisms for the stack cache, and (5) Prefetching-like technique for the stack cache. In addition, we present our WCET analysis tool Odyssey, which implements timing analyses for Patmos.