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Enabling Timing Analysis of Complex Embedded Software Systems
Publication Type:
Doctoral Thesis
Publisher:
Mälardalen University Press
Abstract
Cars, trains, trucks, telecom networks and industrial robots are examples of
products relying on complex embedded software systems, running on embedded
computers. Such systems may consist of millions of lines of program code
developed by hundreds of engineers over many years, often decades.Over the long life-cycle of such systems, the main part of the product
development costs is typically not the initial development, but the
software maintenance, i.e., improvements and corrections of defects,
over the years. Of the maintenance costs, a major cost is the verification of
the system after changes has been applied, which often requires a huge amount
of testing. However, today's techniques are not sufficient, as defects often
are found post-release, by the customers. This area is therefore of high
relevance for industry.Complex embedded systems often control machinery where timing is crucial for
accuracy and safety. Such systems therefore have important requirements on
timing, such as maximum response times to different events. However, when
maintaining complex embedded software systems, it is difficult to predict how
changes may impact the system's run-time behavior and timing, e.g., response
times. Analytical and formal methods for timing analysis exist, but are often
hard to apply in practice on complex embedded systems, for several reasons. As
a result, the industrial practice in deciding the suitability of a proposed
change, with respect to its run-time impact, is to rely on the subjective
judgment of experienced developers and architects. This is a risky and
inefficient, trial-and-error approach, which may waste large amounts of
person-hours on implementing unsuitable software designs, with potential timing
or performance problems. This can generally not be detected at all until late
stages of testing, when the updated software system can be tested on system
level, under realistic conditions. Even then, it is easy to miss such problems.
If products are released containing software with latent timing errors, it may
cause huge costs, such as car recalls, or even accidents. Even when such
problems are found using testing, they necessitate design changes late in the
development project, which cause delays and increase costs.This thesis presents a framework for impact analysis with respect to run-time
behavior such as timing and performance, targeting complex embedded systems. The impact analysis is performed through optimizing simulation, where the
simulation models are automatically generated from the system implementation.
This approach allows for predicting the consequences of proposed designs, for new or modified features, by prototyping the change in the simulation model on
a high level of abstraction. This could be to simply increase the execution time of a particular task. Thereby, unsuitable designs can be identified early, before implementation, and a late redesigns are thereby avoided, which improves development efficiency and predictability, as well as software quality.The contributions presented in this thesis are within four areas related to
simulation-based analysis of complex embedded systems: (1) simulation and
simulation optimization techniques, (2) automated model extraction of
simulation models from source code, (3) methods for validation of such
simulation models and (4) recording techniques for model extraction, impact
analysis and model validation purposes. Several tools has been developed during this work, of which two are in commercialization in the spin-off company
Percepio AB.Note that the Katana approach presented in Chapter 5 is subject for a
U.S. patent application - patent pending.
Bibtex
@phdthesis{Kraft1912,
author = {Johan Kraft},
title = {Enabling Timing Analysis of Complex Embedded Software Systems},
number = {84},
month = {August},
year = {2010},
school = {M{\"a}lardalen University Press},
url = {http://www.es.mdu.se/publications/1912-}
}