Tool Mentor: TCN Time Analyzer
Time Analyzer is a tool for worst case response time (WCRT) analysis in an electrical architecture comprised of nodes/hosts, CAN-buses and switched Ethernet networks.

Relationships
Main Description

Abstraction level

Implementation

Use Case Tasks

·         Specify Timing Budgets / Time budget properties

·         Use Case X / Task Y

·         etc

Covered aspect

Worst case response time  (WCRT) analysis in an electrical architecture comprised of nodes/hosts, CAN-buses and switched Ethernet networks.

Algorithm

Worst case response time (WCRT) analysis, especially worst case forwarding delay (WCFD) analysis of UDP frames traversing a switched Ethernet network and Worst Case Buffer Usage (WCBU) analysis of Ethernet frame buffers in the Ethernet switches.

Inputs

Model file describing electrical architecture using EAST-ADL or TCNDL (Time Critical Networks Description Language).

Particular constraints on inputs

The tool currently contains a limited set of modeled Ethernet switches. New switch types can be added to the tool, but should first be modeled by TCN. The Ethernet switches should currently be of store-and-forward type with a shared memory architecture.

Preparation of input

The electrical architecture can be modeled using the modeling functionality in TCN TimeAnalyzer. Flow modeling can take advantage of TCN StreamAnalyzer, which allows capturing and analysis of Ethernet frame traffic in the links of a physical Ethernet network.

Invocation of the algorithm

Start the TCN TimeAnalyzer tool, load an electrical architecture model from an EAST-ADL or TCNDL file or model an electrical architecture from scratch using the TCN TimeAnalyzer model editor. Run the analysis to compute WCRTs, WCFDs., WCBUs etc.

Outputs

An HTML report file with comparisons of each ReactionConstraint, AgeConstraint etc. specified in the supplied EAST-ADL or TCNDL file with a computed WCRT. Also, for each Ethernet switch, a WCBU is specified and for each UDP frame a WCFD is presented.

Visualization of results

Color coding of constraint fulfillment.