Response-Time Analysis for Task Chains in Communicating Threads

When modelling software components for timing analysis, we typically encounter functional chains of tasks that lead to precedence relations. As these task chains represent a functionally-dependent sequence of operations, in real-time systems, there is usually a requirement for their end-to-end latency. When mapped to software components, functional chains often result in communicating threads. Since threads are scheduled rather than tasks, specific task chain properties arise that can be exploited for response-time analysis. As a core contribution, this paper presents an extension of the busy-window analysis suitable for such task chains in static-priority preemptive systems. We evaluated the extended busy-window analysis in a compositional performance analysis using synthetic test cases and a realistic automotive use case showing far tighter response-time bounds than current approaches.