Flow Analysis on Intermediate Source Code for WCET Estimation of Compiler-Optimized Programs

Many WCET analysis tools developed in academia integrate WCET analysis into program compilation, either to transform flow information extracted from the source code level to the object code level, or to perform flow analysis on a special intermediate representation. This integration increases analysis complexity, forces software developers to use a special compiler, and thus, strongly limits the usability of the tools in practice. Motivated by this limitation in the existing flow analysis approaches, this paper presents a more efficient approach, that performs flow analysis on the intermediate source code (ISC), transformed from the original source code. ISC retains the functional behavior and executability of the original source code but has a structure close to the object code. This low level structure facilitates the transformation of the flow facts, extracted from the ISC, down to the object code level. In the whole approach, no modification of standard tools is needed.