| 1. |
- Gustavsson, Andreas, 1982-
(author)
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Static Execution Time Analysis of Parallel Systems
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The past trend of increasing processor throughput by increasing the clock frequency and the instruction level parallelism is no longer feasible due to extensive power consumption and heat dissipation. Therefore, the current trend in computer hardware design is to expose explicit parallelism to the software level. This is most often done using multiple, relatively slow and simple, processing cores situated on a single processor chip. The cores usually share some resources on the chip, such as some level of cache memory (which means that they also share the interconnect, e.g., a bus, to that memory and also all higher levels of memory). To fully exploit this type of parallel processor chip, programs running on it will have to be concurrent. Since multi-core processors are the new standard, even embedded real-time systems will (and some already do) incorporate this kind of processor and concurrent code.A real-time system is any system whose correctness is dependent both on its functional and temporal behavior. For some real-time systems, a failure to meet the temporal requirements can have catastrophic consequences. Therefore, it is crucial that methods to derive safe estimations on the timing properties of parallel computer systems are developed, if at all possible.This thesis presents a method to derive safe (lower and upper) bounds on the execution time of a given parallel system, thus showing that such methods must exist. The interface to the method is a small concurrent programming language, based on communicating and synchronizing threads, that is formally (syntactically and semantically) defined in the thesis. The method is based on abstract execution, which is itself based on abstract interpretation techniques that have been commonly used within the field of timing analysis of single-core computer systems, to derive safe timing bounds in an efficient (although, over-approximative) way. The thesis also proves the soundness of the presented method (i.e., that the estimated timing bounds are indeed safe) and evaluates a prototype implementation of it.
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| 2. |
- Gustavsson, Andreas, 1982-
(author)
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Static Timing Analysis of Parallel Systems Using Abstract Execution
- 2014
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The Power Wall has stopped the past trend of increasing processor throughput by increasing the clock frequency and the instruction level parallelism.Therefore, the current trend in computer hardware design is to expose explicit parallelism to the software level.This is most often done using multiple processing cores situated on a single processor chip.The cores usually share some resources on the chip, such as some level of cache memory (which means that they also share the interconnect, e.g. a bus, to that memory and also all higher levels of memory), and to fully exploit this type of parallel processor chip, programs running on it will have to be concurrent.Since multi-core processors are the new standard, even embedded real-time systems will (and some already do) incorporate this kind of processor and concurrent code.A real-time system is any system whose correctness is dependent both on its functional and temporal output. For some real-time systems, a failure to meet the temporal requirements can have catastrophic consequences. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that methods to analyze and derive safe estimations on the timing properties of parallel computer systems are developed.This thesis presents an analysis that derives safe (lower and upper) bounds on the execution time of a given parallel system.The interface to the analysis is a small concurrent programming language, based on communicating and synchronizing threads, that is formally (syntactically and semantically) defined in the thesis.The analysis is based on abstract execution, which is itself based on abstract interpretation techniques that have been commonly used within the field of timing analysis of single-core computer systems, to derive safe timing bounds in an efficient (although, over-approximative) way.Basically, abstract execution simulates the execution of several real executions of the analyzed program in one go.The thesis also proves the soundness of the presented analysis (i.e. that the estimated timing bounds are indeed safe) and includes some examples, each showing different features or characteristics of the analysis.
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| 3. |
- Gustavsson, Andreas, et al.
(author)
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Towards WCET Analysis of Multicore Architectures using UPPAAL
- 2010
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In: OpenAccess Series in Informatics, vol. 15, 2010. - 9783939897217 ; , s. 101-112
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- To take full advantage of the increasingly used shared-memory multicore architectures, software algorithms will need to be parallelized over multiple threads. This means that threads will have to share resources (e.g. some level of cache) and communicate and synchronize with each other. There already exist software libraries (e.g. OpenMP) used to explicitly parallelize available sequential C/C++ and Fortran code, which means that parallel code could be easily obtained. To be able to use parallel software running on multicore architectures in embedded systems with hard real-time constraints, new WCET (Worst-Case Execution Time) analysis methods and tools must be developed. This paper investigates a method based on model-checking a system of timed automata using the UPPAAL tool box. It is found that it is possible to perform WCET analysis on (not too large and complex) parallel systems using UPPAAL. We also show how to model thread synchronization using spinlock-like primitives.
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| 4. |
- Altenbernd, Peter, et al.
(author)
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Automatic Generation of Timing Models for Timing Analysis of High-Level Code
- 2011
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In: 19th International Conference on Real-Time and Network Systems (RTNS2011).
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Traditional timing analysis is applied only in the late stages of embedded system software development, when the hardware is available and the code is compiled and linked. However, preliminary timing estimates are often needed already in early stages of system development, both for hard and soft real-time systems. If the hardware is not yet fully accessible, or the code is not yet ready to compile or link, then the timing estimation must be done for the source code rather than for the binary. This paper describes how source-level timing models can be derived automatically for given combinations of hardware architecture and compiler. The models are identified from measured execution times for a set of synthetic "training programs" compiled for the hardware platform in question. The models can be used to derive source-level WCET estimates, as well as for estimating the execution times for single program runs. Our experiments indicate that the models can predict the execution times of the final, compiled code with a deviation up to 20%.
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| 5. |
- Barkah, Dani, et al.
(author)
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Evaluation of Automatic Flow Analysis for WCET Calculation on Industrial Real-Time System Code
- 2008
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In: Proceedings - Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems, 2008. - 9780769532981 ; , s. 331-340
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A static Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) analysis derives upper bounds for the execution times of programs. Such analysts requires information about the possible program flows. The current practice is to provide this information manually, which can be laborious and error-prone. An alternative is to derive this information through an automated flow analysis. In this article, we present a case study where an automatic flowanalysis method was tested on industrial real-time system code. The same code was the subject of an earlier WCET case study, where it was analysed using manual annotations for the flow information. The purpose of the current study was to see to which extent the same flow information could be found automatically. The results show that for the most part this is indeed possible, and we could derive comparable WCET estimates using the automatically generated flow information. In addition, valuable insights were gained on what is needed to make flow analysis methods work on real production code.
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| 6. |
- Bygde, Stefan, et al.
(author)
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An Efficient Algorithm for Parametric WCET Calculation
- 2009
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In: 2009 15TH IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EMBEDDED AND REAL-TIME COMPUTING SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS, PROCEEDINGS. - LOS ALAMITOS : IEEE COMPUTER SOC. - 9780769537870 ; , s. 13-21
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Static WCET analysis is a process dedicated to derive a safe upper bound of the worst-case execution time of a program. In many real-time systems, however, a constant global WCET estimate is not always so useful since a program may behave very differently depending on its configuration or mode. A parametric WCET analysis derives the upper bound as formula rather than a constant. This paper presents a new efficient algorithm that can obtain a safe parametric estimate of the WCET of a program. This algorithm is evaluated on a large set of benchmarks and compared to a previous approach to parametric WCET calculation. The evaluation shows that the new algorithm, to the cost of some imprecision, scales much better and can handle more realistic programs than the previous approach.
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| 7. |
- Bygde, Stefan, et al.
(author)
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An efficient algorithm for parametric WCET calculation
- 2011
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In: Journal of systems architecture. - : Elsevier BV. - 1383-7621 .- 1873-6165. ; 57:6, s. 614-624
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Static WCET analysis is a process dedicated to derive a safe upper bound of the worst-case execution time of a program. In many real-time systems, however, a constant global WCET estimate is not always so useful since a program may behave very differently depending on its configuration or mode. A parametric WCET analysis derives the upper bound as a formula rather than a constant. This paper presents a new algorithm that can obtain a safe parametric estimate of the WCET of a program. This algorithm is evaluated on a large set of benchmarks and compared to a previous approach to parametric WCET calculation. The evaluation shows that the new algorithm, to the cost of some imprecision, scales much better and can handle more realistic programs than the previous approach.
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| 8. |
- Bygde, Stefan, 1980-
(author)
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Static WCET Analysis Based on Abstract Interpretation and Counting of Elements
- 2010
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In a real-time system, it is crucial to ensure that all tasks of the system holdtheir deadlines. A missed deadline in a real-time system means that the systemhas not been able to function correctly. If the system is safety critical, this canlead to disaster. To ensure that all tasks keep their deadlines, the Worst-CaseExecution Time (WCET) of these tasks has to be known. This can be done bymeasuring the execution times of a task, however, this is inflexible, time consumingand in general not safe (i.e., the worst-casemight not be found). Unlessthe task is measured with all possible input combinations and configurations,which is in most cases out of the question, there is no way to guarantee that thelongest measured time actually corresponds to the real worst case.Static analysis analyses a safe model of the hardware together with thesource or object code of a program to derive an estimate of theWCET. This estimateis guaranteed to be equal to or greater than the real WCET. This is doneby making calculations which in all steps make sure that the time is exactlyor conservatively estimated. In many cases, however, the execution time of atask or a program is highly dependent on the given input. Thus, the estimatedworst case may correspond to some input or configuration which is rarely (ornever) used in practice. For such systems, where execution time is highly inputdependent, a more accurate timing analysis which take input into considerationis desired.In this thesis we present a framework based on abstract interpretation andcounting of possible semantic states of a program. This is a general methodof WCET analysis, which is language independent and platform independent.The two main applications of this framework are a loop bound analysis and aparametric analysis. The loop bound analysis can be used to quickly find upperbounds for loops in a program while the parametric framework provides aninput-dependent estimation of theWCET. The input-dependent estimation cangive much more accurate estimates if the input is known at run-time.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Corcoran, Diarmuid, et al.
(author)
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Artificial intelligence in RAN – a software framework for AI-driven RAN automation
- 2020
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In: Ericsson Technology Review. - 0014-0171.
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Journal article (pop. science, debate, etc.)abstract
- Artificial intelligence and its subfield machine learning offer well-established techniques for solving historically difficult multi-parameterization problems. Used correctly, these techniques have tremendous potential to overcome complex cross-domain automation challenges in radio networks.Our ongoing research reveals that an integrated framework of software enablers will be essential to success.
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