Deadline analysis of interrupt-driven software

Real-time, reactive, and embedded systems are increasingly used throughout society (e.g., flight control, railway signaling, vehicle management, medical devices, and many others). For real-time, interrupt-driven software, timely interrupt handling is part of correctness. It is vital for software verification in such systems to check that all specified deadlines for interrupt handling will be met. Such verification is a daunting task because of the large number of different possible interrupt arrival scenarios. For example, for a Z86-based microcontroller, there can be up to six interrupt sources and each interrupt can arrive during any clock cycle. Verification of such systems has traditionally relied upon lengthy and tedious testing; even under the best of circumstances, testing is likely to cover only a fraction of the state space in interrupt-driven systems. This paper presents the Zilog Architecture Resource Bounding Infrastructure (ZARBI), a tool for deadline analysis of interrup...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: SIGSOFT
• Authors: Dennis Brylow, Jens Palsberg
• Keywords: Interrupt Arrival Scenarios, SIGSOFT 2003, Software Engineering, Testing Oracles, Timely Interrupt Handling