Quantitative Characterization of Event Streams in Analysis of Hard Real-Time Applications

Many real-time embedded systems process event streams that are composed of a finite number of different event types. Each different event type on the stream would typically impose a different workload to the system, and thus the knowledge of possible correlations and dependencies between the different event types could be exploited to get tighter analytic performance bounds of the complete system. We propose an abstract stream model to characterize such an event stream. The model captures the needed information of all possible traces of a class of event streams. Hence, it can be used to obtain hard bounded worst-case and best-case analysis results of a system. We show how the proposed abstract stream model can be obtained from a concrete stream specification, and how it can be used for performance analysis. The applicability of our approach and its advantages over traditional worst-case performance analysis are shown in a case study of a multimedia application.Ernesto Wandeler is a Ph.D. student at the Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. His research interests include models, methods and tools for system-level performance analysis of real-time embedded systems. He holds a Dipl. El.-Ing. degree from ETH Zurich. In 2003, he received the Willi Studer Price and the ETH Medal, both from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. He is a student member of the IEEE and the ACM.Alexander Maxiaguine is a Ph.D. student at the Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. His research interests include models and methods for system-level performance analysis and scheduling of embedded multiprocessor architectures, especially for real-time multimedia applications. Maxiaguine has an M.S. in electrical engineering from the Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics. He is a member of the IEEE and the ACM.Lothar Thiele is a full professor of computer engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. His research interests include models, methods and software tools for the design of embedded systems, embedded software and bioinspired optimization techniques. In 1986 he received the Dissertation Award of the Technical University of Munich, in 1987, the Outstanding Young Author Award of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, in 1988, the Browder J. Thompson Memorial Award of the IEEE, and in 2000–2001, the IBM Faculty Partnership Award. In 2004, he joined the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina.