Influence of different abstractions on the performance analysis of distributed hard real-time systems

System level performance analysis plays a fundamental role in the design process of hard real-time embedded systems. Several different approaches have been presented so far to address the problem of accurate performance analysis of distributed embedded systems in early design stages. The existing formal analysis methods are based on essentially different concepts of abstraction. However, the influence of these different models on the accuracy of the system analysis is widely unknown, as a direct comparison of performance analysis methods has not been considered so far. We define a set of benchmarks aimed at the S. Perathoner ( ) · E. Wandeler · L. Thiele Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] E. Wandeler e-mail: [email protected] L. Thiele e-mail: [email protected] A. Hamann · S. Schliecker · R. Henia · R. Racu · R. Ernst Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany A. Hamann e-mail: [email protected] S. Schliecker e-mail: [email protected] R. Henia e-mail: [email protected] R. Racu e-mail: [email protected] R. Ernst e-mail: [email protected] M. González Harbour Grupo de Computadores y Tiempo Real, Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, Spain e-mail: [email protected] S. Perathoner et al. evaluation of performance analysis techniques for distributed systems. We apply different analysis methods to the benchmarks and compare the results obtained in terms of accuracy and analysis times, highlighting the specific effects of the various abstractions. We also point out several pitfalls for the analysis accuracy of single approaches and investigate the reasons for pessimistic performance predictions.