Analysis of timing hazards in Ada programs

Safety-critical Ada programs often contain asynchronous tasks and are, therefore, prone to timing hazards. Neither rigorous testing nor rigorous formal verification is currently feasible for timing hazard detection. We propose an inexpensive static analysis that can assist in the identification of timing hazards. Only a few Ada constructs can generate results that depend on the asynchronous timing of tasks within a program. Using the techniques of data dependency analysis, these timing dependencies can be traced through the program. If an output is timing dependent, manual inspection is required to determine whether the timing dependency is deliberate or is an unintended timing hazard.