A tool for high-level language analysis of worst-case execution times

Abstract

Real-time system software must be guaranteed to meet the timing constraints demanded by the application. To give such guarantees, the real-time programmer needs detailed feedback about the temporal behavior of the programmed code. The author presents a tool that computes worst-case timing information for real-time programs. The tool, called WCET analyzer (WCET stands for Worst-Case Execution Time), derives an upper bound for the execution time of a given piece of program code and provides detailed information about the worst-case behavior of that code at the programming language level. The author describes the principle of operation of the tool and the results it produces.