REAL-TIME PERFORMANCE ANALYZER RPA-H

Advances in computer technology are improving system performance, but system performance analyzing techniques and tools are not yet fully developed. This paper describes a system called RPA/H, which analyzes system performance without interfering with a target system. Real-time embedded systems are often very critical in their timing behavior. It is very important that this timing behavior be closely observed. Authors have developed RPA/H for solving performance problems in the real-time embedded systems through observing the timing behavior of the system. RPA/H consists of a hardware tracer and software tools. When analyzing a target system, the hardware tracer is attached to the target system and collects all of the bus transactions on the target CPU board into the tracer memory. The software tools are used to analyze data collected by the hardware tracer. These software tools include a library routine, statistical information generators, and a timing chart generator. In particular, the timing chart generator is the most powerful tool available for finding the locations of system bottlenecks and determining their causes. Authors will also describe experiences with the application of these tools in analyzing systems under development.