Estimating the execution time of software components is often mandatory when
evaluating the non-functional properties of software-intensive systems. This
particularly holds for real-time embedded systems, e.g., in the context of
industrial automation. In practice it is however very hard to obtain reliable
execution time estimates which are accurate, but not overly pessimistic with
respect to the typical behavior of the software.
This article proposes two new concepts to ease the use of execution time
analysis for industrial control applications: (1) a method based on recurring
occurrences of code sequences for automatically creating a timing model of a
given processor and (2) an interactive way to integrate execution time analysis
into the development environment, thus making timing analysis results easily
accessible for software developers. The proposed methods are validated by an
industrial case study, which shows that a significant amount of code reuse is
present in a set of representative industrial control applications.Comment: In Proceedings FESCA 2014, arXiv:1404.043
