Practical experiences of applying source-level WCET flow analysis to industrial code

Abstract

Code-level timing analysis, such as worst-case execution time (WCET) analysis, usually takes place at the binary level. However, many program properties that are important for the analysis, such as constraints on possible program flows, are easier to derive at the source code level since this code contains much more information. Therefore, various source-level analyses can provide valuable support for timing analysis. However, source-level analysis is not always smoothly applicable in industrial settings. In this paper, we report on the experiences of applying source-level analysis to industrial code in the ALL-TIMES project: the promises, the pitfalls, and the workarounds that were developed. We also discuss various approaches to how the difficulties that were encountered can be tackled.