Integration of Static Runtime Analysis and Program Compilation

The knowledge of the maximum execution time of program code is essential for the design implementation and correct operation of hard real-time systems. Without detailed knowledge of the execution time it is impossible guarantee that the computer system will always meet its deadlines. Thus, there is a need for methods and tools to determine the timing behaviour of program code and entire applications. This thesis presents a novell programming language, which is designed under the constraint of being well-suited for automatic estimation of very tight upper bound on the maximum execution time during compilation time. The grammar of the language is derived from ANSI C and is extended with path-information annotations to describe the timing behaviour of the program. Based on this language, a concept and an implementation of a tool for the automatic calculation of the maximum execution time of programs is presented. This tool is based on the GNU C compiler GCC