Fully Automatic, Parametric Worst-Case Execution Time Analysis

Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) analysis means to compute a safe upper bound to the execution time of a piece of code. Parametric WCET analysis yields symbolic upper bounds: expressions that may contain parameters. These parameters may represent, for instance, values of input parameters to the program, or maximal iteration counts for loops. We describe a technique for fully automatic parametric WCET analysis, which is based on known mathematical methods: an abstract interpretation to calculate parametric constraints on program flow, a symbolic method to count integer points in polyhedra, and a symbolic ILP technique to solve the subsequent IPET calculation of WCET bound. The technique is capable of handling unstructured code, and it can find upper bounds to loop iteration counts automatically.