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Documents authored by Serra, Isabel

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2025.20
Detecting Low-Density Mixtures in High-Quantile Tails for pWCET Estimation

Authors: Blau Manau, Sergi Vilardell, Isabel Serra, Enrico Mezzetti, Jaume Abella, and Francisco J. Cazorla

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 335, 37th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2025)

Abstract
The variability arising from sophisticated hardware and software solutions in cutting-edge embedded products causes software to exhibit complex execution time distributions. Mixture distributions can happen, with different density (weight), as a result of inherent different features in the execution platform and multiple operational scenarios. In the context of probabilistic WCET (pWCET) analysis based on Extreme Value Theory (EVT), where identical distribution is a pre-requisite, mixtures are typically intercepted by applying stationarity tests on the full sample. Those tests, however, are instructed to detect only mixtures with sufficiently high probability (weight) and disregard low-density mixtures (which are unlikely to be preserved in the high-quantile tail of the sample) as they would prevent any form of stationarity. Nonetheless, low-density mixture distributions can persist and even exacerbate in the tail, and, when not considered, they can impair pWCET estimation in EVT-based approaches, leading to overly pessimistic or optimistic bounds. In this work, we propose TailID, an iterative point-wise approach that builds on the asymptotic convergence of the Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) of the Extreme Value Index (EVI) parameter ξ to detect low-density mixture distributions on high-quantile tails and use this information to steer EVT tail selection. The benefits of the proposed method are assessed on synthetic mixture distributions and real data collected on an industrially representative embedded platform.
Cite as

Blau Manau, Sergi Vilardell, Isabel Serra, Enrico Mezzetti, Jaume Abella, and Francisco J. Cazorla. Detecting Low-Density Mixtures in High-Quantile Tails for pWCET Estimation. In 37th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 335, pp. 20:1-20:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{manau_et_al:LIPIcs.ECRTS.2025.20,
  author =	{Manau, Blau and Vilardell, Sergi and Serra, Isabel and Mezzetti, Enrico and Abella, Jaume and Cazorla, Francisco J.},
  title =	{{Detecting Low-Density Mixtures in High-Quantile Tails for pWCET Estimation}},
  booktitle =	{37th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2025)},
  pages =	{20:1--20:25},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-377-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{335},
  editor =	{Mancuso, Renato},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2025.20},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-235982},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2025.20},
  annote =	{Keywords: WCET, EVT}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2022.4
Using Quantile Regression in Neural Networks for Contention Prediction in Multicore Processors

Authors: Axel Brando, Isabel Serra, Enrico Mezzetti, Jaume Abella, and Francisco J. Cazorla

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 231, 34th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2022)

Abstract
The development of multicore-based embedded real-time systems is a complex process that encompasses several phases. During the software design and development phases (DDP), and prior to the validation phase, key decisions are taken that cover several aspects of the system under development, from hardware selection and configuration, to the identification and mapping of software functions to the processing nodes. The timing dimension steers a large fraction of those decisions as the correctness of the final system ultimately depends on the implemented functions being able to execute within the allotted time budgets. Early execution time figures already in the DDP are thus needed to prevent flawed design decisions resulting in timing misbehavior being intercepted at the timing analysis step in the advanced development phases, when rolling back to different design decisions is extremely onerous. Multicore timing interference compounds this situation as it has been shown to largely impact execution time of tasks and, therefore, must be factored in when deriving early timing bounds. To effectively prevent misconfigurations while preserving resource efficiency, early timing estimates, typically derived from previous projects or early versions of the software functions, should conservatively and tightly overestimate the timing requirements of the final system configuration including multicore contention. In this work, we show that multi-linear regression (MLR) models and neural network (NN) models can be used to predict the impact of multicore contention on tasks' execution time and hence, derive contention-aware early time budgets, as soon as a release (binary) of the application is available. However, those techniques widely used in the mainstream domain minimize the average/mean case and the predicted impact of contention frequently underestimates the impact that can potentially arise at run time. In order to cover this gap, we propose the use of quantile regression neural networks (QRNN), which are specifically designed to predict the desired high quantile. QRNN reduces the number of underestimations compared to MLR and NN models while containing the overestimation by preserving the high quality prediction. For a set of workloads composed by representative kernels running on a NXP T2080 processor, QRNN reduces the number of underestimations to 8.8% compared to 46.8% and 31.3% for MLR and NN models respectively, while keeping the average over estimation in 1%. QRNN exposes a parameter, the target quantile, that allows controlling the behavior of the predictions so it adapts to user’s needs.
Cite as

Axel Brando, Isabel Serra, Enrico Mezzetti, Jaume Abella, and Francisco J. Cazorla. Using Quantile Regression in Neural Networks for Contention Prediction in Multicore Processors. In 34th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 231, pp. 4:1-4:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{brando_et_al:LIPIcs.ECRTS.2022.4,
  author =	{Brando, Axel and Serra, Isabel and Mezzetti, Enrico and Abella, Jaume and Cazorla, Francisco J.},
  title =	{{Using Quantile Regression in Neural Networks for Contention Prediction in Multicore Processors}},
  booktitle =	{34th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2022)},
  pages =	{4:1--4:25},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-239-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{231},
  editor =	{Maggio, Martina},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2022.4},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-163213},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2022.4},
  annote =	{Keywords: Neural Networks, Quantile Prediction, Multicore Contention}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2022.20
Using Markov’s Inequality with Power-Of-k Function for Probabilistic WCET Estimation

Authors: Sergi Vilardell, Isabel Serra, Enrico Mezzetti, Jaume Abella, Francisco J. Cazorla, and Joan del Castillo

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 231, 34th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2022)

Abstract
Deriving WCET estimates for software programs with probabilistic means (a.k.a. pWCET estimation) has received significant attention during last years as a way to deal with the increased complexity of the processors used in real-time systems. Many works build on Extreme Value Theory (EVT) that is fed with a sample of the collected data (execution times). In its application, EVT carries two sources of uncertainty: the first one that is intrinsic to the EVT model and relates to determining the subset of the sample that belongs to the (upper) tail, and hence, is actually used by EVT for prediction; and the second one that is induced by the sampling process and hence is inherent to all sample-based methods. In this work, we show that Markov’s inequality can be used to obtain provable trustworthy probabilistic bounds to the tail of a distribution without incurring any model-intrinsic uncertainty. Yet, it produces pessimistic estimates that we shave substantially by proposing the use of a power-of-k function instead of the default identity function used by Markov’s inequality. Lastly, we propose a method to deal with sampling uncertainty for Markov’s inequality that consistently improves EVT estimates on synthetic and real data obtained from a railway application.
Cite as

Sergi Vilardell, Isabel Serra, Enrico Mezzetti, Jaume Abella, Francisco J. Cazorla, and Joan del Castillo. Using Markov’s Inequality with Power-Of-k Function for Probabilistic WCET Estimation. In 34th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 231, pp. 20:1-20:24, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{vilardell_et_al:LIPIcs.ECRTS.2022.20,
  author =	{Vilardell, Sergi and Serra, Isabel and Mezzetti, Enrico and Abella, Jaume and Cazorla, Francisco J. and del Castillo, Joan},
  title =	{{Using Markov’s Inequality with Power-Of-k Function for Probabilistic WCET Estimation}},
  booktitle =	{34th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2022)},
  pages =	{20:1--20:24},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-239-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{231},
  editor =	{Maggio, Martina},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2022.20},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-163377},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2022.20},
  annote =	{Keywords: Markov’s inequality, probabilistic time estimates, probabilistic WCET, Extreme Value Theory}
}
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