Time Bands: A Software Approach for Timing Analysis on Resource Constrained Systems

Timing analysis of embedded systems is an operation performed when there are tasks that have to execute with a well precise deadline, and need to be scheduled, such as those on real-time systems. The diffusion of embedded systems to different kind of application areas is driving platforms toward heterogeneous multi-core architectures, that require a timing analysis done by using measurement based techniques. Measurements collection, when done via an instrumentation of the application, can cause an overhead in the execution time, footprint and necessary space to store data, that can affect the behaviour of the system. In such a scenario, this work proposes a framework that allows a user to quickly perform instrumentation choices, by using a concept named Time Band, and to have a direct feedback about the impact of its choices on some performance parameters. Time Band is then applied to Rapitime, a diffused timing analysis tool, and first tests have been done on IA-32 and PowerPC architectures, showing the advantages of different techniques the can be applied to realize the framework.