Addressing Dynamic Dispatching Issues in WCET Analysis for Object-Oriented Hard Real-Time Systems
E. Yu-Shing Hu, G. Bernat and A. Wellings
There is a trend towards using object-oriented programming languages to develop hard real-time applications. However, some object-oriented features, such as dynamic dispatching and dynamic loading, are prohibited from being used in hard real-time systems because they are either unpredictable and/or unanalysable. Arguably, these restrictions could make applications very limited and unrealistic since they could eliminate the major advantages of object-oriented programming. This paper demonstrates how we can address the dynamic dispatching issues in Worst-Case Execution Timing (WCET) analysis with minimum annotations. The major contributions include: discussing the major issues involved in using and restricting dynamic binding features; weakening the restriction of using dynamic dispatching; presenting how to estimate tighter and safer WCET value in object-oriented hard real-time systems. Our approach shows that allowing the use of dynamic dispatching not only can provide a more flexible way to develop object-oriented hard real-time applications, but it also does not necessarily result in unpredictable timing analysis.
BibTex Entry
@inproceedings{Hu2002a,
annote = {},
author = {E. Yu-Shing Hu and G. Bernat and A. Wellings},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Symposium on Object-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing ISORC-2002},
category = {wcet, languages},
crossref = {},
key = {},
month = {Apr},
note = {},
number = {},
pages = {109--116},
title = {Addressing Dynamic Dispatching Issues in {WCET} Analysis for Object-Oriented Hard Real-Time Systems},
volume = {},
year = {2002}
}