Tidorum Ltd

Products and services

Tidorum Ltd develops and supplies tools that determine bounds on the time and space consumption of embedded programs.

The company's main product, Bound-T, applies static program analysis on the machine-code level to compute upper bounds on the execution time of the target program (worst case execution time, WCET) and on the worst-case consumption of stack memory. This information is valuable when the target program must fit into a given execution time (deadline) and a given amount of memory. Moreover, this information can be used to choose a processor and a memory size that match the application and thus save on hardware cost and power consumption.

Bound-T is licensed as an executable program (binary) adapted for a chosen target processor, for example the Intel-8051, and a chosen workstation (host) platform.

Technical approach

To analyze a target program, Bound-T reads the machine-code instructions from the executable file, decodes them and constructs control-flow graphs and call graphs. For each instruction, Bound-T models the number of execution cycles, the allocation or deallocation of stack space and the arithmetic effect on registers, variables and condition flags. Using the arithmetic model (expressed in Presburger arithmetic) Bound-T can find loop-counter variables and bounds on the number of repetitions of counter-based loops. To find the longest execution path, Bound-T uses the Implicit Path Enumeration Technique which is based on Integer Linear Programming.

The timing model includes pipeline effects. Cache effects are not yet modelled.

Bound-T is written in the Ada programming language and consists of a set of target-independent core modules (Ada packages) that provide a target-independent model of the program under analysis and a set of target-independent analysis algorithms. The core modules interact with a set of target-specific packages that use the powerful Ada data-type facilities to model the instructions and features of a given target processor and its instruction set. The target-specific packages provide the "primitive" types and target-specific operations for the general program model and the general analysis algorithms.

Research collaborations and partners

Tidorum currently participates in the following international research projects and groups:

• Timing Analysis on Code-Level (TACLe)
  

  Tidorum is joining this European COST network (Cooperation in Science and Technology) which involves research groups from 14 European countries.

  
  
• Advanced Program Analysis for Real-Time-Systems (APARTS)
  

  Tidorum is the industrial partner in this Marie-Curie IAPP project (Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways), funded by EU FP7. The academic partner is Mälardalen University, Sweden. The project is led by prof. Björn Lisper of the Mälardalen Real-Time Research Centre.

Tidorum participated in the following past international research projects and groups, now finished:

• ArtistDesign Network of Excellence (EU FP7).
  

  Tidorum was an affiliated partner in the Timing-Analysis Cluster of this NoE. The cluster was led by prof. Björn Lisper of the Mälardalen Real-Time Research Centre.

  
  
• ARTIST2 Network of Excellence (EU FP6).
  

  Tidorum was first an affiliate and later a full partner in the Timing-Analysis Cluster of this NoE.

  
  
• ASTEC Competence Center.
  Tidorum participated in the WCET project within ASTEC Stage 4.

The company

Tidorum Ltd is a privately owned limited company formed  in 2003. The company head, Ph.D. Niklas Holsti, has over 25 years of experience with embedded real-time software, including on-board flight software for spacecraft (see his CV).

Contact information