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Verification of real-time systems with preemption: negative and positive results

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Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore the problem of verification of preemptible real-time systems, i.e. systems composed of tasks which can be suspended and resumed by an on-line scheduler. The first contribution of the article is to show that this problem is unfortunately undecidable. To overcome this negative result, we restrict the real-time tasks to be periodic and the implementation to be functionally deterministic, meaning that the preemptions do not affect the functional behaviour and preserve some temporal properties satisfied by the specification. We prove that the verification problem of functional determinism is decidable. This outlines a verification strategy: (1) prove that the scheduled real-time system is deterministic, (2) consider a deterministic non preemptible behaviour which is functionally equivalent to the executions and (3) verify the properties on this behaviour.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRIT-ENSEEIHT, 2 rue C, 31071, Camichel, Toulouse, France

    Jérôme Ermont & Claire Pagetti

  2. ONERA-CERT, 2 avenue E, 31055, Belin, Toulouse, France

    Frédéric Boniol & Claire Pagetti

Authors
  1. Frédéric Boniol
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  2. Jérôme Ermont
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  3. Claire Pagetti
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Correspondence to Jérôme Ermont.

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Boniol, F., Ermont, J. & Pagetti, C. Verification of real-time systems with preemption: negative and positive results. Innovations Syst Softw Eng 5, 163–179 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11334-009-0093-4

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