The past trend of increasing processor throughput by increasing the clock frequency and the instruction level parallelism is no longer feasible due to extensive power consumption and heat dissipation. Therefore, the current trend in computer hardware design is to expose explicit parallelism to the software level. This is most often done using multiple, relatively slow and simple, processing cores situated on a single processor chip. The cores usually share some resources on the chip, such as some level of cache memory (which means that they also share the interconnect, e.g., a bus, to that memory and also all higher levels of memory). To fully exploit this type of parallel processor chip, programs running on it will have to be concurrent. Since multi-core processors are the new standard, even embedded real-time systems will (and some already do) incorporate this kind of processor and concurrent code. A real-time system is any system whose correctness is dependent both on its functional and temporal behavior. For some real-time systems, a failure to meet the temporal requirements can have catastrophic consequences. Therefore, it is crucial that methods to derive safe estimations on the timing properties of parallel computer systems are developed, if at all possible. This thesis presents a method to derive safe (lower and upper) bounds on the execution time of a given parallel system, thus showing that such methods must exist. The interface to the method is a small concurrent programming language, based on communicating and synchronizing threads, that is formally (syntactically and semantically) defined in the thesis. The method is based on abstract execution, which is itself based on abstract interpretation techniques that have been commonly used within the field of timing analysis of single-core computer systems, to derive safe timing bounds in an efficient (although, over-approximative) way. The thesis also proves the soundness of the presented method (i.e., that the estimated timing bounds are indeed safe) and evaluates a prototype implementation of it. / Den strategi som historiskt sett använts för att öka processorers prestanda (genom ökad klockfrekvens och ökad instruktionsnivåparallellism) är inte längre hållbar på grund av den ökade energikonsumtion som krävs. Därför är den nuvarande trenden inom processordesign att låta mjukvaran påverka det parallella exekveringsbeteendet. Detta görs vanligtvis genom att placera multipla processorkärnor på ett och samma processorchip. Kärnorna delar vanligtvis på några av processorchipets resurser, såsom cache-minne (och därmed också det nätverk, till exempel en buss, som ansluter kärnorna till detta minne, samt alla minnen på högre nivåer). För att utnyttja all den prestanda som denna typ av processorer erbjuder så måste mjukvaran som körs på dem kunna delas upp över de tillgängliga kärnorna. Eftersom flerkärniga processorer är standard idag så måste även realtidssystem baseras på dessa och den nämnda typen av kod.  Ett realtidssystem är ett datorsystem som måste vara både funktionellt och tidsmässigt korrekt. För vissa typer av realtidssystem kan ett inkorrekt tidsmässigt beteende ha katastrofala följder. Därför är det ytterst viktigt att metoder för att analysera och beräkna säkra gränser för det tidsmässiga beteendet hos parallella datorsystem tas fram. Denna avhandling presenterar en metod för att beräkna säkra gränser för exekveringstiden hos ett givet parallellt system, och visar därmed att sådana metoder existerar. Gränssnittet till metoden är ett litet formellt definierat trådat programmeringsspråk där trådarna tillåts kommunicera och synkronisera med varandra. Metoden baseras på abstrakt exekvering för att effektivt beräkna de säkra (men ofta överskattade) gränserna för exekveringstiden. Abstrakt exekvering baseras i sin tur på abstrakta interpreteringstekniker som vida används inom tidsanalys av sekventiella datorsystem. Avhandlingen bevisar även korrektheten hos den presenterade metoden (det vill säga att de beräknade gränserna för det analyserade systemets exekveringstid är säkra) och utvärderar en prototypimplementation av den. / Worst-Case Execution Time Analysis of Parallel Systems / RALF3 - Software for Embedded High Performance Architectures

The Power Wall has stopped the past trend of increasing processor throughput by increasing the clock frequency and the instruction level parallelism.Therefore, the current trend in computer hardware design is to expose explicit parallelism to the software level.This is most often done using multiple processing cores situated on a single processor chip.The cores usually share some resources on the chip, such as some level of cache memory (which means that they also share the interconnect, e.g. a bus, to that memory and also all higher levels of memory), and to fully exploit this type of parallel processor chip, programs running on it will have to be concurrent.Since multi-core processors are the new standard, even embedded real-time systems will (and some already do) incorporate this kind of processor and concurrent code. A real-time system is any system whose correctness is dependent both on its functional and temporal output. For some real-time systems, a failure to meet the temporal requirements can have catastrophic consequences. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that methods to analyze and derive safe estimations on the timing properties of parallel computer systems are developed. This thesis presents an analysis that derives safe (lower and upper) bounds on the execution time of a given parallel system.The interface to the analysis is a small concurrent programming language, based on communicating and synchronizing threads, that is formally (syntactically and semantically) defined in the thesis.The analysis is based on abstract execution, which is itself based on abstract interpretation techniques that have been commonly used within the field of timing analysis of single-core computer systems, to derive safe timing bounds in an efficient (although, over-approximative) way.Basically, abstract execution simulates the execution of several real executions of the analyzed program in one go.The thesis also proves the soundness of the presented analysis (i.e. that the estimated timing bounds are indeed safe) and includes some examples, each showing different features or characteristics of the analysis. / Worst-Case Execution Time Analysis of Parallel Systems / RALF3 - Software for Embedded High Performance Architectures