Performance estimation for real-time distributed embedded systems

Many embedded computing systems are distributed systems: communicating processes executing on several CPUs/ASICs. This paper describes a performance analysis algorithm for a set of tasks executing on a heterogeneous distributed system. Tight bounds are essential to the synthesis and verification of application-specific distributed systems, such as embedded computing systems. Our bounding algorithms are valid for a general problem model: The system can contain several tasks with hard real-time deadlines and different periods; each task is partitioned into a set of processes related by data dependencies. The periods of tasks and the computation times of processes are not necessarily constant and can be specified by a lower bound and an upper bound. Such a model requires a more sophisticated algorithm, but leads to more accurate results than previous work. Our algorithm both provides tighter bounds and is faster than previous methods.