Sensitivity Analysis of Real-Time Systems

Verification of real-time software systems can be expensive in terms of time and resources. Testing is the main method of proving correctness but has been shown to be a long and time consuming process. Model-checking techniques have been shown to be unsuitable when realtime software systems are involved but still have value when verifying functional correctness. Performance modelling techniques allow systems to be evaluated for timing correctness. Everyday engineers are usually unwilling to adopt formal approaches to correctness because of the overhead associated with developing their knowledge of such techniques. This paper introduces PARTES, a methodology which guides the extraction of performance models from programs written in an annotated subset of C.