Intelligent editor for writing worst-case-execution-time-oriented programs

Abstract

To guarantee timeliness in hard real-time systems the knowledge of the worst-case execution time (WCET) for its time-critical tasks is mandatory. Accurate and correct WCET analysis for modern processor is a quite complex problem. Path analysis is required to identify a minimal set of possible execution paths. Further, the modeling of a processor's internal states for features like caches or pipelines requires to consider possible interferences of these features. This paper presents a new software engineering paradigm tailored to the development of real-time software. This paradigm results into more predictable programs and is therefore well-suited for the development of real-time systems. New software development tools are necessary to support developers in writing efficient code for this new paradigm. In this paper an editor is described that highlights all code that is not conform with this programming paradigm. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.