Tutorial: How to Optimize Reliable Software

York, UK, 16th April 2010 Rapita is pleased to be selected to provide a tutorial on software optimization to the Reliable Software Technologies Conference - Ada Europe 2010. Dr Ian Broster will run the half-day training session on the afternoon of Monday 14th June 2010 in Valencia, Spain. The conference program is available here. Please register on-line and select Tutorial T5 (I. Broster). There is a discount for registration before 24th May. For more information, or if you are unable to attend on this date and would like to take part in a similar tutorial, please feel free to contact us.

Abstract

Software timing overruns are often the root cause of intermittent failures that occur late in the project lifecycle or worse still post deployment. Optimising real-time software to ensure that timing requirements are met can be both costly and time consuming. The tutorial examines common misconceptions and pitfalls in approaches to solving timing problems which can consume effort and resources while failing to address the underlying issues. An effective process is then presented which avoids these pitfalls. This process identifies code that contributes the most to the overall worst-case execution time, asks what if questions about the outcome of optimisation, and targets optimisation effort where it will have the maximum benefit for the minimum cost. The tutorial closes with a summary of the results of case study, applying this process to a large Ada project. There will be an opportunity for hands-on work, including a competition and prize for the best optimization.

Why should you participate in this tutorial

This tutorial will benefit embedded software developers and managers who need to engineer reliable, embedded software. Today, software timing analysis does not have to be guesswork. The presentation covers two key aspects of real-time systems performance: (1) how to gain a clear, detailed, and accurate understanding of the execution time behavior of embedded software, (2) how to target optimization effort precisely where it will have the maximum benefit in improving system timing behavior (eliminating timing failures and creating headroom for new functionality) for the minimum cost.