Whole-System WCEC Analysis for Energy-Constrained Real-Time Systems (Artifact)

Abstract

Although internal devices (e.g., memory, timers) and external devices (e.g., sensors, transceivers) significantly contribute to the energy consumption of an embedded real-time system, their impact on the worst-case response energy consumption (WCRE) of tasks is usually not adequately taken into account.
Most WCRE analysis techniques only focus on the processor and neglect the energy consumption of other hardware units that are temporarily activated and deactivated in the system.

To solve the problem of system-wide energy-consumption analysis, we present SysWCEC, an approach that addresses these problems by enabling static WCRE analysis for entire real-time systems, including internal as well as external devices.
For this purpose, SysWCEC introduces a novel abstraction, the power-state--transition graph, which contains information about the worst-case energy consumption of all possible execution paths.
To construct the graph, SysWCEC decomposes the analyzed real-time system into blocks during which the set of active devices in the system does not change and is consequently able to precisely handle devices being dynamically activated or deactivated.

In this artifact evaluation, which accompanies our related conference paper, we present easy to reproduce WCRE analyses with the SysWCEC framework using several benchmarks.
The artifact comprises the generation of the power-state--transition graph from a given benchmark system and the formulation of an integer linear program whose solution eventually yields safe WCRE bounds.