research-article

N-version programming in WCET analysis: revisiting a discredited idea

Authors:

Trevor Harmon,

Michael R. LowryAuthors Info & Claims

FoSER '10: Proceedings of the FSE/SDP workshop on Future of software engineering research

Pages 157 - 160

https://doi.org/10.1145/1882362.1882396

Published: 07 November 2010 Publication History

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Abstract

Worst-case execution time (WCET) analysis is safe in theory, but it may not truly be safe in practice. Even if a particular analysis algorithm is sound, its implementation may contain bugs that result in unsafe WCET estimation. This potential for error is serious, given that the usual purpose of WCET analysis is to verify the correctness of hard real-time systems--software on which entire missions and even human lives may depend.

A possible solution lies in N-version programming, where N teams of developers work independently on N unique but equivalent implementations. Although this fault-tolerance technique has been criticized for its statistical assumptions and high cost, it may be perfectly suited to address the inherent risks in implementing WCET analysis tools. This paper argues that N-version programming still has merit and cites an example of how the technique improved the quality of two WCET analysis tools at relatively low cost.

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Tavares EMaciel PSousa ENogueira BAmorim LLira V(2012)A hierarchical pre-runtime scheduling for hard real-time systems considering fault-tolerance2012 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC)10.1109/ICSMC.2012.6377896(1207-1212)Online publication date: Oct-2012
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSMC.2012.6377896

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N-version programming in WCET analysis: revisiting a discredited idea

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Published In

FoSER '10: Proceedings of the FSE/SDP workshop on Future of software engineering research

November 2010

460 pages

ISBN:9781450304276

DOI:10.1145/1882362

General Chair:
Gruia-Catalin Roman
Washington University in St. Louis, USA
,
Program Chair:
Kevin Sullivan
University of Virginia, USA

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Published: 07 November 2010

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SIGSOFT

SIGSOFT/FSE'10: 18th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering

November 7 - 8, 2010

New Mexico, Santa Fe, USA

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Tavares EMaciel PSousa ENogueira BAmorim LLira V(2012)A hierarchical pre-runtime scheduling for hard real-time systems considering fault-tolerance2012 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC)10.1109/ICSMC.2012.6377896(1207-1212)Online publication date: Oct-2012
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSMC.2012.6377896

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Recommendations

A Survey of WCET Analysis of Real-Time Operating Systems

WCET Analysis of the mC/OS-II Real-Time Kernel

Hardware support for WCET analysis of hard real-time multicore systems