CISTER Distinguished talk on “pWCET Reliability Evaluation for Measurement-Based Probabilistic Timing Analysis” with Prof. Rômulo Oliveira

From December 2019 to June 2020, CISTER/FEUP is hosting Professor Rômulo Oliveira, from Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil, who is a distinguished member of the Brazilian real-time systems community. Rômulo Oliveira is currently on a sabbatical leave in Porto.
In this context, Prof. Oliveira visited the main premises of CISTER on the 18th of December of 2019 and delivered a talk within the CISTER Distinguished Seminar Series entitled "pWCET Reliability Evaluation for Measurement-Based Probabilistic Timing Analysis".
In this talk, he addressed the problem of estimating probabilistic bounds for the worst-case execution time of real-time tasks based on the analysis of execution time measurements and using Extreme Value Theory (EVT). He explained how this estimation is done, particularly using two sampling approaches, Block Maxima (BM) and Peaks Over Threshold (POT). The method was applied to concrete examples yielding worst-case execution time estimates and associated confidence intervals. To produce reliability and tightness information, those outcomes were compared against the maximum values observed on large execution traces. The talk generated a lively discussion among the audience. In fact, the topic is rather up-to-date and it is currently generating significant interest in the research community due to the growing complexity of embedded software and hardware platforms that preclude the efficient use of static analysis.