Accurate and efficient identification of worst-case execution time for multicore processors: A survey

Abstract

Parallel systems were for a long time confined to high-performance computing. However, with the increasing popularity of multicore processors, parallelization has also become important for other computing domains, such as desktops and embedded systems. Mission-critical embedded software, like that used in avionics and automotive industry, also needs to guarantee real time behavior. For that purpose, tools are needed to calculate the worst-case execution time (WCET) of tasks running on a processor, so that the real time system can make sure that real time guarantees are met. However, due to the shared resources present in a multicore system, this task is made much more difficult as compared to finding WCET for a single core processor. In this paper, we will discuss how recent research has tried to solve this problem and what the open research problems are.