Applying sensitivity analysis in real-time distributed systems

During real-world design of embedded real-time systems, it cannot be expected that all performance data required for scheduling analysis is fully available up front. In such situations, sensitivity analysis is a promising approach to deal with uncertainties that result from incomplete specifications, early performance estimates, late feature requests, and so on. Sensitivity analysis allows the system designer to keep track of the flexibility of the system, and thus to quickly assess the impact of changes of individual hardware and software components on system performance. In this paper we integrate sensitivity analysis into our system-level performance analysis framework SymTA/S and show its benefits during the design of complex, networked multiprocessor embedded real-time systems.