A Generic Framework for Blackbox Components in WCET Computation

Validation of embedded hard real-time systems requires the computation of the Worst Case Execution Time (WCET). Although these systems make more and more use of Components Off The Shelf (COTS), the current WCET computation methods are usually applied to whole programs: these analysis methods require access to the whole system code, that is incompatible with the use of COTS. In this paper, after discussing the specific cases of the loop bounds estimation and the instruction cache analysis, we show in a generic way how static analysis involved in WCET computation can be pre-computed on COTS in order to obtain component partial results. These partial results can be distributed with the COTS, in order to compute the WCET in the context of a full application. We describe also the information items to include in the partial result, and we propose an XML exchange format to represent these data. Additionally, we show that the partial analysis enables us to reduce the analysis time while introducing very little pessimism.