Using SMT Solving for the Lookup of Infeasible Paths in Binary Programs

Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) is a key component to check temporal constraints of realtime systems. WCET by static analysis provides a safe upper bound. While hardware modelling is now efficient, loss of precision stems mainly in the inclusion of infeasible execution paths in the WCET calculation. This paper proposes a new method to detect such paths based on static analysis of machine code and the feasibility test of conditions using Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) solvers. The experimentation shows promising results although the expected precision was slightly lowered due to clamping operations needed to cope with complexity explosion. An important point is that the implementation has been performed in the OTAWA framework and is independent of any instruction set thanks to its semantic instructions