CAREER: Vertically Integrated Program Analysis for Embedded Software

职业生涯：嵌入式软件垂直集成程序分析近年来，在嵌入式软件开发的工具支持方面取得了很大进展。工具可以解决各种难题，例如，通过自动执行错误修复实现任务，通过消除冗余和低效的构造，以及通过保证不存在某些类型的错误，例如竞争条件或内存不足异常。NSF的这项职业研究是关于垂直集成的程序分析和转换(VIPAT)，这是一种看待嵌入式软件工具的新方法：作为可以以不同方式连接在一起的构建块的集合，以支持新的分析和转换。现有的工具变成了受高层政策控制的机制。VIPAT基于两个主要理念。首先，垂直集成在不同抽象级别上操作的工具，这允许高级别转换精确地定位于低级别资源使用率最差的系统部分。第二，明确机制和政策的分离，使现有工具能够在新形势下得到有效利用。这项研究是迈向这样一个世界的一步，在这个世界里，可以对程序行为做出有意义的静态保证，并且软件可以自动专门化，以满足特定于平台和应用程序的需求，如时间和能量限制。高层的愿景是“无所畏惧的重用”：开发人员应该花更少的时间担心他们重用的组件的资源使用和潜在的故障模式。

CAREER: Vertically Integrated Program Analysis for Embedded SoftwareIn recent years, a great deal of progress has been made towards toolsupport for developing embedded software. Tools solve a variety ofdifficult problems, for example by automating error-proneimplementation tasks, by eliminating redundant and inefficientconstructs, and by guaranteeing the absence of certain classes oferrors, such as race conditions or out-of-memory exceptions. ThisNSF CAREER research is about Vertically Integrated Program Analysis andTransformation (VIPAT), a new way to look at embedded software tools:as a collection of building blocks that can be connected together indifferent ways to support novel analyses and transformations. Theexisting tools become mechanisms that are controlled by a high-levelpolicy. VIPAT is based on two main ideas. First, the verticalintegration of tools that operate at various levels of abstraction,which permits high-level transformations to be precisely targeted atparts of a system whose low-level resource usage is worst. Second, aclean separation between mechanism and policy, enabling effectivereuse of existing tools in new situations. This research is a steptowards a world where meaningful static guarantees about programbehavior can be made, and where software can be automaticallyspecialized to meet platform- and application-specific requirementssuch as time and energy constraints. The high-level vision is"fearless reuse": developers should spend less time worrying aboutresource usage and potential failure modes of components that theyreuse.