Experiences from Industrial WCET Analysis Case Studies

Abstract

Static Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) analysis
is currently taking a step from research to industrial
use. We present a summary of three case studies
where static WCET analysis has been used to analyse
production code for embedded real-time systems. The
primary purpose has not been to test the accuracy of
the obtained WCET estimates, but rather to investigate
the practical and methodological difficulties that
arise when applying current WCET analysis methods
to these particular kind of systems.
In particular, we have been interested in how laborintensive
the analysis becomes, for instance by estimating
the efforts to study the analysed code in detail, and
measuring the number of manual annotations necessary
to perform the analysis. From these observations, we
draw some conclusions about what would be needed to
turn static WCET analysis into a useful tool for embedded
and real-time systems software development.