Interval-Based Analysis of Software Processes
Dirk Ziegenbein, Fabian Wolf, Kai R. Richter, Marek Jersak, Rolf Ernst · ACM SIGPLAN Notices · 2001
A typical characteristic of complex embedded systems is their large software share that consists of software processes either being directly written in an implementation language like C, or being created from abstract modeling tools (e. g. Simulink or StateMate) using standard code generators, or being reused from previous designs (e. g. legacy code). A major challenge is the safe integration of these separately designed system parts. This paper focuses on the formal analysis of software processes with respect to their non-functional properties like timing or power consumption. The proposed approach yields safe upper and lower bounds on these properties and has advantages over previous work in terms of accuracy and efficiency. Further, it is shown how the results of this process-level analysis can be utilized to generate a model for the system-wide validation of non-functional properties. The applicability of the approach is demonstrated using an example of a filter process operating on a packet stream.