CAREER: Vertically Integrated Program Analysis for Embedded Software

职业：嵌入式软件的垂直集成程序分析近年来，在嵌入式软件开发工具支持方面取得了很大的进展。 工具可以解决各种各样的难题，例如，通过自动化易出错的实现任务，通过消除冗余和低效的构造，以及通过保证不存在某些错误类别，例如竞争条件或内存不足异常。 NSF的这项CAREER研究是关于垂直集成程序分析和转换（VIPAT）的，这是一种看待嵌入式软件工具的新方法：作为一组构建块，可以以不同的方式连接在一起，以支持新颖的分析和转换。 现有的工具成为由高级策略控制的机制。 VIPAT基于两个主要想法。 第一，在不同抽象层次上操作的工具的垂直集成，这允许高层次的转换精确地针对系统中低层次资源使用最差的部分。 第二，实现机制和策略的清晰分离，使现有工具能够在新的情况下有效地重用。 这项研究是迈向一个世界的一步，在这个世界中，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平台和应用程序特定的要求，例如时间和能源限制。 高级的愿景是“无畏的重用”：开发人员应该花更少的时间担心资源使用和他们重用的组件的潜在故障模式。

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.