Title: Program slicing across the hardware-software boundary for embedded systems

Authors: Jeffry T. Russell, Margarida F. Jacome

Addresses: Moorehead Group, 4308 Palladio Drive, Austin, TX 78731 USA. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA

Abstract: The source code analysis technique of graph-based program slicing is extended to model interactions across the hardware-software boundary in the context of embedded systems. Specifically, this work proposes: a set of inter-process dependences to model software interacting with hardware; an asynchronous concurrency representation of dependences present in embedded systems; an algorithm to compute context-sensitive slices that can transitively follow dependences from software, through hardware, and back to software. A prototype tool applies the proposed worklist algorithm to several test cases. Additionally, a detailed, step-by-step example demonstrates its operation on a device driver interacting with hardware.

Keywords: program slicing; embedded systems; hardware-software codesign; SDG; system dependence graph; source code analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJES.2009.027241

International Journal of Embedded Systems, 2009 Vol.4 No.1, pp.66 - 82

Published online: 18 Jul 2009 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article