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A. Prantl:
"Source-to-Source Transformations for WCET Analysis: The CoSTA Approach";
Talk: 24. Workshop der GI-Fachgruppe "Programmiersprachen und Rechenkonzepte", Bad Honnef, 2.-4. Mai 2007; 2007-05-02 - 2007-05-04; in: "24. Workshop der GI-Fachgruppe "Programmiersprachen und Rechenkonzepte", Bad Honnef, 2.-4. Mai 2007", 0707/Kiel (2007), 10 pages.

Abstract. Worst-case execution time (WCET) analysis is concerned
with computing upper bounds of the maximum computation time of a
program. This is indispensable for the development of safety-critical realtime
systems, where missing a deadline can have disastrous consequences,
including the loss of lives. Tools for WCET analysis typically analyze the
object-code of a program since this is the code which is actually executed.
Simultaneously, they usually rely on user-provided annotations such as
loop-bounds or execution frequencies of program statements in order
to be effective. From the perspective of a programmer, it is often more
adequate to provide such information on the source code level than on the
object code level. This, however, introduces a gap between the WCET
annotation and the WCET analysis level. Within the CoSTA project
(Compiler Support for Timing Analysis) we are aiming at bridging this
gap. Fundamental to this is to provide appropriate new compiler support
allowing to transform source code annotations into equivalent object code
annotations.
In this paper we outline the approach taken in the CoSTA project to
achieve this. In this project, which has recently been started, the compilation
process is decomposed into a high-level machine-independent and
a low-level machine-dependent two-stage process. Here, we will focus on
the first stage of this process, the high-level source-to-source compiler
and the annotation framework.