Using a WCET Analysis Tool in Real-Time Systems Education

To reach a more widespread use, WCET analysis tools need to be a standard part in the education of embedded systems developers. Many real-time courses in academia use Lego Mindstorms, an off-the-shelf kit of Lego bricks for building and controlling small prototype robots. We describe work on porting the Bound-T WCET analysis tool to the Lego Mindstorms microprocessor; the Renesas H8/3292. We believe that this work will make students, and indirectly the industry of tomorrow, aware of the benefits of WCET analysis tools. We also present the real-time laboratory framework in which this WCET analysis tool will be used. The framework has been developed with schedulability and timing predictability in mind, and is already used in a number of real-time courses given at M¨alardalen University in Sweden. The developed WCET tool and the real-time laboratory framework will be freely available for academic use